The Unknown Grounds
by HereAfter
Summary: After an unofficial mission for Spirit World goes sideways, Yusuke and his team wind up participants in the Unknown Grounds, a perverse game only one out of a hundred players can survive. Escaping with their lives will mean twisting the rules and recovering their stolen powers—and for Yusuke, hardest of all, putting back together the pieces of his stupid, dimwit heart. [Yusuke/OC]
1. Match Starts In

_**Chapter 1: Match Starts In...**_

* * *

 _ **96**_ Joined

This mission was bullshit.

Actual hot, steaming, fresh-from-a-cow's-ass bullshit. A load of crap that had worked its slimy, disgusting way between Yusuke's toes and jacked up his whole day. Scratch that. His whole fucking week.

Because he was _not_ supposed to be spending tonight bolting through this stupid maze of hallways like a bat straight out of Demon World's bowels. He was _not_ supposed to be separated from Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei, cursing the fox's plan to split up and search the laboratory. He was _not_ —really, really fucking _not_ —supposed to have been hit by the dart that was still stuck in the crevice of his shoulder blade, wedged out of reach and seriously screwing up his access to his energy.

So yeah, bullshit. By the never-ending truckload.

"You're going to pay for this, Koenma," he shouted as he whipped around a corner of the empty corridor. "I'm retired, remember? Or, really, fired? And I should've said no to this dumbass mission the second you came whining my way!"

No answer came. Obviously. Because Binky Breath wasn't here. He wasn't the one who'd been sent traipsing out to some empty, shithouse of a lab in Nowheresville, Demon World. But he was probably watching this waste of time on those monstrously huge television screens in his ridiculous office, sucking on his pacifier like the child he was.

If so, Yusuke hoped the camera caught the bird he tossed to the featureless ceiling.

Ahead, the corridor stretched and stretched, impossibly long. From the outside, this training facility had looked tiny. Hiei-sized. Nah, Koenma-sized. Yet the hall had no end in sight. There were only bland white walls and even whiter floor tiles, blurring on and on and on.

And at his back, as they had been for twenty minutes now, the lights were winking out. Bulbs in the sterile fluorescents overhead popping clean out of existence. Crackling and buzzing as if eliminated by a power surge.

Then there was only darkness.

Well, darkness and that _thing_. Whatever the hell it was that had been pursuing him ever since Kurama hatched their plan to separate.

It had driven Yusuke apart from Kuwabara five turns back in the maze-like halls, and he'd lost track of the lug's hollers not long after. Which meant he was alone now, sprinting away from the presence roiling in his wake. It didn't feel like anything he'd ever felt before, though considering his cruddy awareness, maybe that didn't mean all that much.

Still, there was an… inhumanness to it. Like it didn't belong to a living being. Forget spirit energy or demon energy or, hell, even sacred energy. This _thing_ wasn't alive. It wasn't coming from some enemy fighter. He hadn't been ambushed in a sneak attack. So even if the dart in his back hadn't cut off his connection to his own power, he'd have been stumped, because he sure as hell didn't know how to kill something that wasn't breathing to begin with.

What he needed was Kurama's quick thinking, but like the dimwit he was, he'd agreed to split up and, in the process, he'd allowed Kurama to walk off with his brain matter still firmly between his ears.

Not that Yusuke would know what to do with Kurama's noggin even if he had it. But at least then he'd have _something_ that might get him out of this mess.

Abruptly, the corridor curved left—another feat that had occurred repeatedly in the last twenty minutes. One second, he was faced with an endless stretch of white. Then boom—a crimson wall lurched into being and the hall hooked to the side.

Cursing through gritted teeth, Yusuke skidded around the turn.

And shuddered to a standstill.

A dart slammed into his throat, right in the tender flesh above his collarbone. Then another struck his bicep. A third found his thigh. A fourth his left ribcage. Dart after dart after dart lanced home, thudding into his skin until he bristled like a pincushion.

Breathless, he slumped to his knees. His hands hit the icy tiles, knuckles curled into bone-white fists. Before him, through the fall of his bangs, he spotted the turret gun that had taken him down. It had stopped firing now, a lazy tendril of smoke curling toward the ceiling from its black maw, but the weight in his muscles was too heavy for him to combat, and without his energy to bolster him, he could do nothing but watch as a glass door behind the turret slid open and a figure dressed in an oh-so-familiar uniform stepped into the hall.

"Welcome, combatant," the silhouette said, voice monotone and characterless. A pair of black shoes trod closer, powder blue pants drawn tight around narrow ankles.

That was the last glimpse Yusuke caught before his vision blurred into darkness, but he still felt the hand that hooked under his arm and hauled him upright like he weighed nothing more than a feather, and he sensed the cold scrape of the tiles against his ankles as the figure dragged him forward, down the hall, past the turret, and into the beyond.

After a moment's lull, he was hit with a barrage of sounds he could make no sense of. The click of a releasing lock. The hiss of escaping air. The clank of shifting metal. A shove at his shoulder sent his body collapsing into soft cushions, and terse hands rolled him onto his back. When they withdrew, a mask settled over his face. Metallic tasting air flooded his lungs.

The sounds came again, in reverse order now. Metal clattering into place. Wind rushing in his ears. A lock clinking tight.

The voice returned, but it echoed from a great distance, as if its owner was far from him or talking through a speaker, voice gone slightly robotic. "Thanks for joining me, Yusuke Urameshi. The Grounds will open shortly. Do put on a show."

Then—nothing.

* * *

 _ **97**_ Joined

"Urameshi! If you're there, answer me!"

Silence.

The sort that echoed in Kuwabara's bones, clamoring against his sixth sense, clawing icy fingers down his spine. Not even his Spirit Sword blazing in his hands was enough to combat the dread that quiet instilled in him.

How far back had he lost Yusuke?

He hadn't noticed when Yusuke disappeared. He'd been right there, jogging at Kuwabara's side, huffing out curses between breaths, and then he'd been gone—poofed out of existence like some bizarro magic trick, like someone had swept the Cape of No Return over his shoulders and banished him off to Hanging Neck Island. That kind of event didn't ordinarily escape Kuwabara's notice. _Usually_ it set off his awareness.

But nothing about tonight had gone according to plan.

For one thing, Kuwabara hadn't banked on a mission to Demon World. Heck, it had been nearly four years since he'd had anything to do with Koenma or Yusuke's gig as Spirit Detective or anything that came with it. If this had been any other Tuesday, he'd have been in his apartment, studying for his approaching mid-term exam.

Instead, he was here. Stuck in this deserted lab. Chasing down some rogue Spirit World operative.

Only, his life wasn't like it had been in junior high anymore. He couldn't just go bolting off for days on end to compete in criminal-run tournaments against demons he had no business fighting. He was a college student now, complete with the hefty tuition bills to prove it, and he was due in a lecture hall in what couldn't be more than ten hours.

But again, he was here—not in his apartment just off campus, not in his bed, not where he was supposed to be.

Worse than that, he was alone, thanks to Kurama.

And the goosebumps rising on his arms were solidly _not_ fans of the situation.

"Yusuke!" he hollered again. "Where the hell are you?"

Maybe, probably, he shouldn't have been yelling. If Infiltration 101 were a class at his university, he'd bet the very first lesson would focus on the importance of secrecy during a break in. But as a fresh shiver wracked through Kuwabara and his skin crawled with unease, he didn't really care about being the perfect spy.

He just wanted some darn company. Was that really so much to ask?

Overhead, the lights started flickering, the unnatural whiteness of their bulbs fading in and out, in and out. Their whining fizzle crept through the hushed stillness, and somehow, that was worse than the silence that had come before. It screamed of an unnatural wrongness, of some presence that simply shouldn't _be_ , but Kuwabara couldn't place why it felt that way. Even after everything he'd encountered alongside Yusuke, this was still unrecognizable.

"Yusuke?" he called. This time his voice was quieter. Uncertain. Despite himself, he wavered.

As one, the lights went out entirely, the whole hallway plunging into pitch black dark. Except for the glow of his Spirit Sword, there was no illumination at all. No windows letting in the moon's silver rays. No emergency lights lining the floors. Despite everything, that struck him most strongly. Shouldn't a laboratory like this have emergency lights? Didn't government facilities—

When the click came, he was ready for it, and though he was no Hiei, he mustered the speed to dodge as a dart came whistling out of the darkness. Ripping through the space where he'd once stood, it pinged uselessly off the wall and clattered to the floor.

For only a moment, Kuwabara hesitated, staring at that dart, at its dim silhouette outlined in the light of his sword. Then another click shattered the silence, and he stumbled out of its path. Gritting his teeth, he urged his legs into motion, thundering into a graceless gallop through the dark with only his Spirit Sword to guide him.

Its golden light spilled across the tiled floor and created nightmarish shadows across the walls, turning his own body into a fiend that hounded him down the corridors, and all the while, the darts kept coming. Not constantly. It seemed whatever fired them wasn't present everywhere. But often enough. And he couldn't get a sense of where was safe, not in that infinite darkness.

So on he ran. Forever and ever.

Until he made a wrong turn. Until the hall ended in crimson without warning. Until it was all he could do to windmill his arms and keep his feet.

The darts found him, then, before he could so much as turn and face them like a man. They hit one after another. A dozen peppering his back in sharp, stinging points.

Instantly, his Spirit Sword vanished. His energy slid out of reach. His awareness dried up. But even still, he felt it. That _wrongness_. Pressing at his back. Walling him in. It crawled across his skin, so violating and twisted that he retched up the remnants of his dinner, spilling it all across the tiles he could no longer see.

By the time the thirteenth dart embedded itself in his lower back and unconsciousness claimed him, he welcomed it.

* * *

 _ **98**_ Joined

Down had been a poor choice.

Perhaps it was not the first miscalculation Kurama had made that night, but it was certainly the most grievous—the one he'd regret long after they put this affair behind them. It was the manner of error he wasn't prone to making, the sort he quite simply hadn't blundered into in years.

Yet it—this decision to descend the laboratory's narrow stairs into the basements below—was the one he'd made, and now he and Hiei would have to see it through.

They were but rabbits trapped in a warren. Prey chased by a more cunning predator, an adversary that had thoroughly outfoxed his shrewd wits.

If Hiei shared Kurama's apprehension, the surly demon cloaked it well, his sentiments hidden behind a scowling veneer, the gleaming slant of his katana more emotive than the dead glint in his eyes. Even still, there was no mistaking the careful calculation with which Hiei patrolled the corridor, searching—as they had been for hours—for some sign of the man Koenma had sent them to apprehend.

But there was no one and nothing. No doors. No windows. Not even the stairs by which they'd reached these sublevels. Somehow, without ever turning, they'd lost the stairwell behind them, this unremarkable corridor extending into infinity, no exit or entrance in sight.

"I'm growing bored," Hiei announced, breaking the quiet that had held them for long, tenuous minutes. It was a declaration meant to obscure the truth—Kurama recognized that instantly—but in speaking, Hiei had betrayed himself, and though his usual flat monotone still clung to every word, Kurama didn't miss the agitation tucked beneath, the barest clipping of the syllables that suggested the unease rattling Hiei's composure.

Rolling the seed of an unbloomed rose between his fingers, Kurama quickened his pace. Not dramatically, but enough, and the slight turn of Hiei's head indicated the demon had noticed.

Kurama pitched his voice low. "You feel it, too."

"Hn."

Not a denial.

Which mean Kurama was right. This… presence he felt was not haunting him alone.

He couldn't see it, couldn't hear it, and—most tellingly of all—couldn't _smell_ it. But he felt it. Everywhere. Lurking. Watching.

Hunting.

"Your Jagan—"

"Is showing me nothing."

Kurama raised a singular brow. "Elaborate."

"I can't find the stairs. Or Yusuke. Or the oaf." The angle of Hiei's katana shifted, and the fluorescent lights caught on the blade, a rainbow of color cascading across the white walls. "It might as well not exist at all."

"My senses are equally inhibited."

As much to himself as anything, Hiei growled, "What is this maddening place?"

An apt question, but one Kurama couldn't answer. It made no sense to him. The endless dimensions of these halls. The creeping sensation of energy for which he had no name. The complete lack of inhabitation they'd witnessed so far.

If Koenma's target was here, he was well-hidden beyond measure.

A chemical stench hung in the sterile air, disinfectant and noxious cleaning elements blending into a vile reek. Too fresh, too potent to be old. Someone was here. Or they had been recently enough to give the whole lab a thorough scrub down that had not yet worn off. And yet, Kurama had witnessed no other sign of a living presence.

It was baffling.

Without warning, Hiei stiffened, and a breath later, the bulbs overhead went dead. Darkness consumed the hall instantly, but no sooner had it swallowed them up than did fresh light burst into being. A licking flame in Hiei's palm. A glow plant twining up Kurama's arm, its luxurious petals casting pale radiance across the shadows.

"Someone cut the power," Hiei said.

"I heard it, too." It would've been inaudible to human ears, the softest of hums evaporating into the ether as whatever generator ran this place ceased running, but Kurama had caught it, and it told him one thing: this outage was intentional. More proof their target was here. Somewhere. If only they could find him.

A flick of Kurama's wrist and pulse of energy was enough to summon his Rose Whip, the small seed he'd once clutched expanding into a thorny vine in the space between one blink and the next. He coiled it loosely, ready to lash out at a moment's notice.

For now, the hall stayed quiet, undisturbed but for their own whispering footsteps.

Or so the senses of Kurama's human body insisted. But he didn't believe them. He knew better. He'd been a thief for too long, an infiltrator born and bred and impossibly practiced, and the instincts he'd honed all those years had never left him.

So the darts weren't a surprise.

When the ceiling panel slid backward and a gun lowered into the hall fast as lightning, Kurama spotted it in an instant. Its muzzle formed a perfect circle, as black as the darkest night, not even Hiei's flame or Kurama's glow plant enough to illuminate it. And as the first dart came lancing through the flickering shadows, he sliced it from the air with innate ease, his Rose Whip blurring from its coil like a striking viper.

But the gun did not shoot just one dart.

Nor did it shoot ten. Or twenty.

No. This was an assault. A hundred darts raining down, spraying across the hall's tight confines. Too many to be dodged. Too many to be cut down.

They weren't all intended to find their mark. That was clear. Instead, their erratic flight paths eliminated escape routes, and though Hiei broke away, racing beyond the bombardment's reach, Kurama was not so lucky. Two darts struck his shoulder. A third found his wrist.

As they pricked his skin, his energy guttered in his chest like the weak flame of a candle before a dancing breeze. In seconds, it had waned entirely, and his Rose Whip shriveled up, wilting away to nothing in his grip.

A fourth dart slammed into his gut, followed quickly by a fifth and sixth, and with each new hit, a sluggishness took hold in Kurama's system. The world spun, and he staggered, a raised forearm colliding with a wall and keeping him upright for only a breath before a seventh dart landed and his knees buckled.

"Kurama!"

The bellow reached him with the odd quality of sound traveling through water. Distant. Unclear. Yet still identifiable. _Hiei_. Riled and unsure.

Kurama tried to raise his head, tried to find Hiei in the darkness, but his glow plant had died as surely as his Rose Whip, and truth be told, he suspected he hadn't lifted his gaze at all. Yet he forced words onto his swollen tongue and past his clumsy lips.

"Run! Hiei, run!"

* * *

 _ **99**_ Joined

A dart had clipped Hiei, its piercing point skimming across his bicep as he bolted out of the turret gun's destructive reach, and just that barest touch was enough to send traces of toxin threading through his system. The venom stretched dampening fingers toward his energy, seeking to put out his flames, to douse his connection to the Jagan.

An intolerable offense.

Snarling, Hiei flared his power, ratcheting his body temperature to new heights and purging the poison from his bloodstream like kindling reduced to ash in a bonfire. All the while, his legs churned and his arms pumped, carrying him away from Kurama's crumpled form, away from the fox so weak and defenseless, on and on until he was desolately alone, running from an enemy he did not understand.

But solo was how Hiei operated best. No dead weight dragging him down. No allies' lives to concern himself with. Nothing but his iron will to rely upon.

This was his element.

And it would not fail him. He _refused_ to let it fail him.

Because if Kurama had gone down, there was certainly no hope for Kuwabara and barely any more for Yusuke. The only thing that might have kept Yusuke standing was his stubbornness, a quality that nearly rivaled Hiei's own, but given a choice between Kurama's sharp cunning and Yusuke's ornery determination, Hiei would always choose the former. That held true even now, and he knew better than to count on Yusuke to pull them out of this.

If they were to escape, it fell on Hiei to make it happen, and he'd burn this whole wretched facility to the ground if their adversary forced his hand. Hell if he wouldn't be happy to oblige.

The world could always use a little more fire.

But first, escape.

He needed a moment to catch his bearings, a chance to calibrate the lab's weak point. One existed—weak points _always_ existed—but tracking it down would take his mind at its sharpest, and he wasn't that, not now.

A calculated retreat was in order. He needed to find higher ground—somewhere out of this wretched basement. Kurama had erred in leading him here, but that didn't mean that blunder had to define him. The fox had his wiles, but Hiei had his wits, and he could utilize that intellect, honed by years of fierce, hard won independence, as sharply as he could wield his katana.

Now, those instincts led him to an updraft, a column of air rising into an almost perfectly concealed ventilation system. Lips curling into a victorious snarl, Hiei slowed his pell-mell pace, tensed his powerful quads, and leapt for the grate concealing the vent. His full weight brought it crashing down, and he rolled to his feet a moment later, peering into the gloom above.

A flick of his wrist summoned new flames to his palm. He tossed the ball into the shaft, illuminating its innards, bringing light to his flight path.

From the vents, he'd be able to navigate anywhere in this vile waste of Spirit World resources. He'd find the source of the strange, indefinable presence that was haunting him, nipping at his heels like hellhounds, and he'd gut it. Or incinerate it. Burn it down to nothing until no more than a chalky outline remained.

The thought brought vicious, purring pleasure to life in Hiei's chest, and his feral snarl morphed into a sinful grin as he sprung for the now open vent. Without the grate to protect it, his leap carried him straight through the opening, and he flung out his arms and legs, pinning himself in place, staving off gravity's incessant pull.

A few coordinated movements later, he'd pulled himself high enough to reach the bend where the vent turned horizontal. His ball of fire bobbed ahead, lighting his way, and as he crested the lip, its flickers cast themselves down the shaft's long, empty channel.

Only—it wasn't empty.

A gun was waiting for him, its muzzle a black void that swallowed every trace of his flame's light, and at once, Hiei recognized the mistake he'd made. A blunder as idiotic as the fox's. Because here in the vents, his speed did him no good. He couldn't run when his feet had no solid ground to stand on, when even his slight frame was bent double in the shaft's tight confines.

As the darts began to fire, Hiei roared, a guttural, raging scream that tore his throat ragged. In its wake slammed a tidal wave of fire, a conflagration intended to continue without end—but the darts didn't falter. Perhaps some did. Perhaps some melted away to useless ruin. But not enough. Not even close.

It only took three.

The same small body that had allowed him into the vent—the ridiculously minute build that had enabled his miscalculation—once again betrayed him. Though the grazing of a single dart had been easy to burn off, he could not fight off a true barrage.

By the time the fourth needle pricked his cheek, his fire had already ceased. His power evaporated, boiling off like steam from a pot. His connection to the Jagan wavered, then closed, snapped as if cleaved in two.

And then he was falling. Gone limp. Unable to hold himself in the shaft any longer.

The last things he knew, right before the void claimed him, were the cold, aching thump of his shoulders careening into the floor panels and—in an unforgivable blow to his pride—the whimper of failure that fell from his lips.

Crushing. Mortifying.

Even if no other soul ever heard it.

* * *

 _ **100**_ Joined

* * *

AN: Whelp. I wasn't supposed to start posting this fic until I had at least five chapters pre-written, but I'm in love with it, and I NEED to share it, so here we are. My other ongoing story, 'Blinded by Light,' is still my primary focus, and I update that every Saturday, but if all goes according to plan, I'll be updating 'The Unknown Grounds' every other Friday.

This story is a new adventure for me. Prior to now, I've always written fanfic from an OC character's POV. This fic changes that. It's going to become YusukexOC, but my OC won't be a POV character. We're staying in the boys' heads all along. Honestly, I'm pretty damn excited to get all up in their psyches. I'm planning to push them to their limits.

This chapter probably raised a lot of questions (like what the heck are with those 'Joined' numbers), but I've got a plan. All will be clear soon! So I hope to see you in two weeks, my friends. I can't wait!


	2. Enter, The Grounds

_**Chapter 2: Enter, The Grounds**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **100**_ Alive

Blue-gray sky stretched in all directions.

Pewter.

Or that's what Keiko had called it when she painted their kitchen in almost that exact shade of gray, anyway. Not that Yusuke was around to see that stupid paint dry. A day later, he'd packed up his shit, walked out, and spent the last three months crashed first on Kuwabara's couch, then on Kurama's, then back at Kuwabara's.

And speaking of couches…

Why the fuck wasn't he on one? Sleeping under the stars was the kind of romantic dumbassery Kuwabara enjoyed, but it wasn't something Yusuke wasted time on. Then again, there weren't actually stars overhead. Just that endless gray canvas. And the noonday sun. Straight above. Bright as a damn floodlight.

Suddenly aware of a pounding headache screaming dead center between his eyes, he slung an arm across his forehead, trying to shield off the sun's piercing rays, then shoved his torso upright with the other. At once, the strange, desolate landscape unfurled—and it was like nothing he'd ever seen.

He lay in a field, coarse, unkempt grass spreading in splotchy patches up a steep hill at his back. Off to his right, shambled houses dotted the terrain, clustered in bunches but for a few stragglers that stood alone. They weren't Japanese. Not even close. The style was all wrong. More… European, maybe?

Oh, hell. Who was he kidding? He couldn't identify architecture. Maybe Kurama could pull off that sort of crap, but Yusuke couldn't.

Still, wherever he was, it definitely wasn't Japan.

And it wasn't Demon World, either.

Which was where he'd been, hadn't it? On that mission for Koenma. Hunting down what's-his-name, the Special Defense Force stooge Koenma had prattled on about for nearly an hour. Yusuke hadn't listened, not really.

He'd figured Kurama would cover their bases on the studious notetaking. Or maybe Kuwabara would've, with all those studying skills he'd picked up in college. Either way, Yusuke hadn't bothered retaining any details. He'd been banking on his fists taking care of the problem nice and quick. He wouldn't have needed names for _that_.

Now, though, still blinking back the infuriating headache between his eyes, he was starting to think he'd screwed up.

Muttering a string of the lewdest curses he'd picked up in Demon World, he scrambled into a crouch. Doing so drew his attention downward, to the weird, gray coveralls he was wearing. When had that happened?

For that matter, _what_ had happened?

He remembered separating from the others, Kurama and Hiei first, then Kuwabara by pure, shitty chance. And he remembered that damn dart that had gotten him between the shoulders, plus all the ones that had followed after. Then it got fuzzy and all he could summon up was a flash of black shoes, a glimpse of powder blue pants, and then being jostled into some kind of machine.

Which meant what exactly?

Was he captive? Kidnapped? But if that was the case, what bonehead kidnapper would just let him loose again? Even if they had done so wherever the hell this was.

Another scan of his surroundings turned up nothing useful. Just more scrubby grass, a few scraggly trees, and those rundown buildings. No people. No signs that anyone had lived here recently.

He spat another swear—the worst he'd ever heard, straight from Genkai's dirty mouth.

If there was one thing in all the worlds that Yusuke truly hated, it was unknown idiots jerking him around.

Oh, and he hated questions. Having them, that is.

Well, and answering them, too.

It was a problem, then, that when he stood, a thousand more questions hit him like a semi-truck. Most obviously, why did his body feel… light? Weak? Slow? Or, really, all those things at once.

His arms felt short, his muscles sluggish. When he breathed, it took effort. For the first time in years, his heart beat fast and rough in his chest, ragged with adrenaline—which was impossible, because his heart didn't beat anymore. Not like a human one. Right?

But it _was_ beating.

It definitely was.

Panicked, a palm pressed against his thudding heartbeat, he reached for his spirit energy, tried to draw it into his limbs to steady himself. Nothing answered.

"Fuck," he breathed.

A clawing attempt to summon demon energy didn't get him any farther. Slowly, and then all at once, his heart racing in a way he'd been certain it had forgotten how to do, he started to understand. The pieces came fumbling together. Still jumbled. Too many missing for him to actually know what kind of puzzle he was looking at, but enough to form the edges. The stupid, fucking edges that Keiko had always insisted on starting with.

 _Because it's easier that way, Yusuke. It gives you guidelines. Something to follow_.

Yeah, well, screw guidelines. Screw rules and predictability and puzzles that possessed any fucking logic.

So what if he wanted to start from the inside out? So what if the world made more sense to him when he just dove into the heart of it? So what if his life wasn't ever going to come together like a stupid jigsaw?

So what—

He saw it fall from the corner of his eye.

A tight, condensed ball of energy. Crimson. Brighter even than the still scorching sun. Plummeting toward the ground. Before it landed, more appeared, half-a-dozen popping into being hundreds of feet overhead, appearing straight out of nothing.

Then falling, falling, falling.

Yusuke knew two things in that moment, right before the initial ball made impact.

First, that his energy was gone. All of it. Every last drop of what made him who he was—of what made him Urameshi Yusuke, former Spirit Detective, ancestral son of Raizen, a Demon World somebody turned into a couch surfing loser by the girl whose perfect puzzle of a life didn't have space for him anymore.

And second, that those were bombs falling from the sky.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **100**_ Alive

Hiei woke on a rooftop.

Not one of the shingled, slanted sorts he'd grown used to in Human World. This wasn't like the Minamino household where he'd so often tracked down Kurama and waited in the eaves until the fox's precious mother had turned in for the night.

Instead, this roof was flat, an expanse of nearly characterless cement. Its only features were a handful of ventilation exhaust ports, their fans silent and dead, a low wall running around the perimeter, and two tiny rooms, one on either end of the building, each bearing a drab, unremarkable door.

Casting a baleful glare at the exhaust fans taunting him for the failure that resulted in his capture, Hiei scented the air, angling his nose into the breeze, but what his senses returned to him was piss poor information. Barely anything at all. As if he were breathing through thick cloth. There were still odors, but they were fainter than they should've been, harder to distinguish between.

He gritted his teeth.

Something was wrong with his body.

Nonetheless, another sharp inhalation was enough to glean what he needed. This wasn't Demon World. The air was too fresh, too pure. There was no residual stink of rotting flesh, no coppery scent of blood, no earthy undertones.

But if this wasn't Demon World—and from the lack of pastel nonsense and billowing clouds, he suspected it wasn't Spirit World either—then that made this Human World. The building beneath him fit that assumption well enough, even if it was unlike anything he'd seen in Sarayashiki or its outskirts. After all, he'd never traveled particularly far—he had Spirit World's idiotic parole enforcements to thank for that. If he'd roamed further afield, perhaps he'd have found structures like this one.

Not that it mattered.

Buildings were buildings.

What did matter was his missing demon energy, his dampened senses—and the bombs falling on the eastern horizon.

There had to be a half-dozen to start, but they multiplied quickly, turning into ten, then fifteen, then a full score of explosives. They made landfall in a flurry, their booming detonations rolling off the hills and echoing back at him, a cacophony that drowned out even the frantic pace of his thoughts.

A lull followed that first volley, the briefest respite before more began to coalesce in the sky, and in the fleeting moment before the second round of explosions hit, Hiei heard screaming. Wild and desperate and addled with pain.

The kind of pain that preceded death.

The kind of pain that made Hiei think, just for a second, that maybe he was home in Demon World after all.

Then the next round of bombs went off, spraying earth into the sky, collapsing the roof of a building no more than a quarter mile from Hiei's own. Ten seconds later, another bout of stillness overtook the valley.

This time, there was no screaming.

Hiei noticed it, then. Two words in the right corner of his vision. Actually, that wasn't quite right. There were two words, yes, but also two numbers. Two rows of text, stacked one atop the other, each written in pale gray script. Visible, but impossible to bring to the center of his focus.

 _ **0**_ _Kills_

 _ **100**_ _Alive_

A breath later, a number changed.

 _ **0**_ _Kills_

 _ **99**_ _Alive_

Instantly, he knew what he was looking at. He'd fought in enough tournaments to recognize it. Not just the sort like the Dark Tournament from years ago, with their one-on-one matches and stringent rules. But also those like the new Demon World Tournaments, with their qualification rounds that pitted scores of fighters together in grand battle royales, quelling the remaining contestants down to the few who could prove their mettle.

In those tournaments, Hiei may not have had a death counter overlaid on his vision, but he knew one was kept. A constant ticking tally for the demon mobs to follow. A marker by which he all too happily tested his own worth.

Except usually, he had his katana and his energy and the Jagan and the Dragon of the Darkness Flame—an entire retinue of talents he'd spent years honing.

Now, he had nothing.

Or, at least, he had nothing yet.

But that would change.

A dozen feet away, toward one of the featureless doors, a machete lay on the roof's hard-poured cement. In a handful of strides, he reached the blade and scooped it up by the hilt. Shit workmanship. Shoddy metal. A rusted edge. But a weapon. A start.

He'd fine more.

Before that, though, he needed to get away from those bombs. Another salvo was gathering in the sky, a dozen scarlet orbs on this go-around. They were still off to the east, but there was no way of knowing how long they might stay there. If their path was going to change, he wanted to be far away from here before it did.

Hiei kept the machete in hand, braced for anything as he yanked open the door and revealed the musty, cobwebbed stairwell within. Then he broke into a jog—down three flights of crumbling stairs, along a poorly lit hallway, and out a westward facing door into the sunlight.

After that, he simply ran.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **99**_ Alive

The first explosion leveled Yusuke.

The bomb landed just yards to his right, and in a burst of heat and light and sheer _force_ , it tore into the earth, shredding a crater into the stretch of field where he'd woken up. That wallop of brute impact drove him first to his knees, then flat to his stomach.

As he slammed into the dirt, he threw one arm uselessly over his head, but the other lodged awkwardly beneath his body, the craggy, hard-packed turf scrapping skin from his elbow and wrist. A hail of shattered stone and dirt clods rained down around him, and shrapnel ore into his right shoulder, lacerating his skin and burying deep in his muscles.

A scream ripped from his lungs, but he couldn't hear it—couldn't hear any damn thing at all.

He only knew he was howling because of the answering shriek of pain in his throat as his vocal chords strained beneath his panicked desperation. Even as another round of bombs began to land, their impacts rumbling through the ground pressed against his bloodied cheek, Yusuke heard nothing. It felt as though someone had driven icepicks through his eardrums, and other than a dull, unceasing roar, no noise permeated the ache in his temples. Yet in the grand scheme of things, compared to the blinding agony in his ruined shoulder, loss of hearing was the least of his problems.

Then again, if he was bleeding out as fast as he thought he was, none of his problems were going to hang around long anyway.

Gritting his teeth, Yusuke pried his uninjured arm from beneath his body and sealed his palm over the worst of his wound. Even though he'd braced for the pain, clamping his hand against his brutalized flesh still nearly knocked him unconscious. Desperately, he clung to the bright rays of the sun, insisting on being the stubborn dimwit he was, refusing to let the darkness close in.

After what could have been years—or only seconds—the vibrations in the ground stilled.

The bombs had stopped.

But though Yusuke had to move, his muscles wouldn't obey him. They felt like putty, like they'd gone liquid around his bones, pulverized down to nothing.

He might've cursed, then. Might've, but without his ears he couldn't be sure. Had his lips actually moved? Or were they as unresponsive as the rest of him?

In the end, it was Genkai's voice in his head, clawed up out of some distant memory, that bullied him into motion, and through an impossible effort, he managed to roll onto his side. The sky yawned above, still pewter gray, visible out of the corner of his eye. For the moment, no more bombs hovered there, burning like falling stars, but who knew if or when they might return.

Yusuke had to get out of this damn field, had to get his pathetic legs under him, had to get somewhere safe, because if he was going to survive this—whatever the fuck this was—he needed to bandage his shoulder. His hand was a crap means of staunching the blood flow, and based on how slick his fingers already were—not to mention how much the world was spinning—it might as well not be there at all.

But even though he knew all that, his muscles sure as hell didn't seem to give a shit.

"Damn it," Yusuke hissed. His jaw scraped over rocks with each syllable, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Screw this mission. Screw Koenma. Screw Kurama for splitting us up. Screw _me_ for being such a fucking idiot."

With every curse, he fought and struggled and swore louder, but all his efforts earned him nothing more than an elbow wedged against his side, providing just enough support for him to leverage his shoulder off the ground and survey the bomb-ravaged land around him.

This was hell.

Not Europe. Hell.

And Yusuke was useless, no better than that kid he'd been nine years ago, the idiot fourteen-year-old who'd thrown himself in front of a car and died in the process. Without his energy, he was just as weak, just as defenseless. He'd never realized it before, just how much his spirit energy—and demon energy, too—made him strong.

He was physically fit, sure. Years of training had given him muscles as finely tuned as any human's could ever be, but without his energy, that strength only went so far, and right now, lying in the dirt, a pool of his blood turning the earth to mud, he was no more durable than he'd been before his first death.

All he had was a weak, human body, while his enemy, whoever the hell that was, had a barrage of explosions.

Talk about really fucking unfair.

A prick of light overhead drew his attention back to the sky, and he tensed, unable to do anything but watch with numb, raging disbelief as a dozen bombs popped into existence.

Another round was incoming.

And _still_ , he couldn't move.

"Fuck this," he bellowed, the words lost on his own ears. "I'm not dying here, damn it." With every bit of strength he possessed, he lurched upright, forcing his torso out of the sticky mess of his blood, his injured arm burning with agony as he managed to wrangle his legs beneath himself.

Motion off to his right froze Yusuke in his tracks. Not the bombs still gathering in the sky. But something else. A blur of black and gray. There. And gone. Then there again.

His instincts screamed that he needed to be running now, but it wasn't like his muscles would've listened anyway, so he didn't try. Instead, he attempted to bring that flitting blur into focus. It was quick. The sort of quick that would've been a challenge to perceive even _with_ his energy.

But now, with all his power gone missing?

He stood a better chance of growing a second head than slowing that blur into something sensible.

Except, maybe it wasn't really a blur at all. 'Blur' implied motion, that it was moving too fast for him to see, leaving nothing but an afterimage on his vision, like Hiei in one of his dead sprints. This wasn't that. This was more like teleporting than pure speed, a disappearing act that rendered the shape ten meters closer every time it flickered into view.

It was a person, though. Tall. Slender. Dark haired. Clad in the same gray coveralls he was wearing. Only fifty meters away now, cutting a zagging path around the gaping craters the bombs had created.

Speaking of bombs…

The dozen had taken full shape, burning like bright, crimson suns in the sky, and as Yusuke gaped up at them, their descent began. A complete freefall. With one directly overhead.

His heart thundered against his ribs, beating with a terror he hadn't felt in years, not since his first encounter with Sensui, back in the streets of Mushiyori when he'd glimpsed how completely outclassed he was by the former Spirit Detective. He was outclassed again now, and this time, his team wasn't around to avenge him once that bomb wiped him off the face of the planet.

Because he wasn't one of Kuwabara's cats—there were no nine lives for him.

Three seemed like all he was getting.

And here he was, wasting another one. The _last_ one.

But as he readied himself for oblivion, a hand slammed into his chest, and a face swam into view. Feminine, but wild, its dark eyes wide with panic. The girl's lips were moving, and he got the sense she was shouting, though her couldn't hear her, but the pressure she exerted against his collarbone said it all.

 _Get down._

The order sheared past his fog of disbelief, cutting through the pain still screaming in his shoulder.

For once in his life, he obeyed without question.

Hurling himself flat against the pockmarked earth, he flung his uninjured arm up to shield his face. Not that it would do anything. That bomb was just meters away now. Coming for him. For both of them. Ready to ice them from this world—

A new burst of scarlet whipped across his field of view.

It arced upward, thrown from the girl's hand, flying fast, so quickly he couldn't make out what it was before it collided with the falling explosive. Both detonated with a boom he felt in his bones. It plastered him into the dirt as the explosion ripped through his body. His nerves screamed, his skin blistering as heat scalded him, and then _he_ was screaming, too, lips parting around a howl he couldn't hear.

Darkness closed in. The world spun away.

Dying.

He was dying.

In all directions, vibrations shook through the field, and as breathing through his scorched lips became a task too great for him to manage, Yusuke realized that this was it. The end. The final hurrah on his all too brief lives.

Here, in this field.

At least he'd see Botan soon.

Out of nowhere, just as the darkness grew absolute, a hand slapped down against his chest. He expected searing pain, one last kick of torment to force him into the afterlife, but it didn't come. Instead, one second the world was dark, his body gone numb, his injuries too much to overcome, and the next second, it was all over.

Light returned.

Feeling returned.

He blinked, and the pewter sky swam into view. Then a curtain of black hair obscured it as the girl leaned over him. Her lips parted around pants that blew across his suddenly unharmed cheeks, her round chin dotted with blood, a gash across the bridge of her nose obscuring the freckles dusted over her skin.

When she spoke, he heard her clear as day. "Sorry. Cut it a bit close."

Her voice was more feminine than her features. It was hoarse, as if her throat was dry or coated with dust, but it was still light and melodic, and nothing about it matched her strong nose or flat, chapped lips.

He struggled upright—or, he prepared to, at least. He'd braced for pain. In his shoulder. In his chest. In all the places he'd been burned.

But there was no pain.

He was fine. The breeze across his skin suggested his coveralls weren't, but _he_ was.

"What the hell happened?"

She jerked her bloodied chin toward his chest and the hand she'd pressed there. For a split second, he thought she'd healed him, the way Yukina or Botan might, but then he realized there was something under her fingers, some sort of patch she'd stuck to him. Deftly, she gripped its edge and pulled it back, its adhesive coming free slowly.

"Med kit," she said, rocking onto her heels and then smoothly upright. Her clothes, he noticed, had fared no better than his, and beneath their tattered remnants, she was all muscle. Well, muscle— _and_ scars. She stuck a hand down to him and hauled him upright. "Reverts you back to your condition at the start of the Match."

"Huh?"

As soon as Yusuke found his feet, she dropped his hand, swiveling to survey the ruined field. "The Match. That's what this is."

"You're not making any sense."

She blew a breath out through her nose. "Now's not the time to explain. You're healed, and I wasted my only med kit to do it. Which means you owe me."

Like hell he did.

He hadn't asked her to save him. Heck, he didn't even know who the fuck she was. And he sure as hell wasn't promising repayment on a debt he hadn't agreed to—

"The Match allows for squads," she added, stopping his thoughts dead. She wasn't looking at him, her dark eyes still locked on the ruined field, jumping from crater to crater. "Squad up with me. Then we get out of here, and I'll teach you the ropes."

He frowned at her, teeth grinding. Running through a mental checklist, he confirmed he was as patched up as she promised. His shoulder was fine. His muscles no longer ached. The burns were gone from his skin. So maybe he did owe her. Just barely.

And if she wasn't lying—and she seemed too matter-of-fact to be playing mind games with him—then whatever mess he'd stumbled into was way over his head. He was in shit up to his waist, and it was sucking him under, like bullshit turned to quicksand.

In that case, his idiot pride aside, maybe a teammate—or a squad, as she put it—wasn't the worst idea in the world.

Yusuke rubbed a thumb along his jaw, hesitating one second longer, but then her gaze swung back to him and she raised an eyebrow in a gesture so sarcastic and familiar that he couldn't tell if it reminded him more of himself or of Hiei—and just like that, he was sticking out a hand and waiting for a deal to be struck. "Name's Urameshi. Thanks for saving my dumb ass."

Her other brow rose to join the first, but a smile cracked across her chapped lips. Her hand closed around his. "Return the favor, and we'll call it even."

He snorted. "You're the badass who ran—or teleported? Whatever the hell you did—into a bombing. If you need saving, I think we're both fucked. But sure, let's squad up."

As soon as the words left his lips, blue light flickered in the left corner of his vision. A pair of names appeared, though it took him until he read his own to realize what they were.

 _ **Hibana**_

 _ **Urameshi**_

He couldn't gaze at the names directly. They kept always in the top left of his view, even when he tried to look up at them, but he could read them anyway, and it seemed the girl had noticed their arrival, too—or had spotted his surprise.

She knocked a knuckle against her chest. "Call me Hibana. Now let's go, Urameshi. The Red Zone isn't the worst threat the Grounds offer."

As she broke into a jog, not teleporting this time, he gave chase. Questions clogged in his throat—like what in hell the Grounds were, for one, and what the Red Zone meant, for another—but he bottled them up. She'd said now wasn't the time, but she'd promised answers. Patience might not be his strong suit, but Grandma had beaten a scrap of it into his soul.

He could wait.

For a little while.

If he had to.

Still, he couldn't help just one question as he glanced over his shoulder to the blood stain he'd left scarring the field, a smear of mud and barely escaped death. "What nightmares could possibly be worse than those bombs?"

Hibana's laugh was low and throaty, more fitting of her rough edges than her voice, but there wasn't a trace of true humor in it. Just cold, broken rage. "For starters? The other players. And trust me, it only gets worse from there."

Well, fuck.

* * *

AN: As I think is probably already abundantly clear, this fic is in the vein of stories like 'The Hunger Games' or 'Battle Royale' by Koushun Takami, but the true, driving inspiration for it is actually the video game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, also known as PUBG. I'm going to be riffing on a whole heck ton of PUBG game mechanics throughout this story, and there will be tons of details/background on all of that posted to my tumblr as the fic progresses.

Also to be found on my tumblr (which is hereafteryyh): maps of the Unknown Grounds and the guys' locations after each chapter, as well as images/a bit of background on the inspiration for Hibana. Check all that out if you're interested! (It'll go up later today.)

Big thanks to you lovely folks who came out for the first chapter! This story is probably going to be rather atypical for the fandom, so it was immensely wonderful to have such a warm reception to the opening. Thank you: shewritesfic, Star Charter, WistfulSin, ClaireShepardHKKY, E.V. Delacy, and Zayren Heart! See you in two weeks!


	3. To Loot or Not To Loot

_**Chapter 3: To Loot or Not To Loot**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **98**_ Alive

Smoke hung in the air.

It blew up from the south, carried over rolling hills on a steady breeze.

Crouched in a copse of tall, hundred-year-old birch trees, tucked within a bush, Kurama watched the gray smog creep closer. He couldn't smell it with the breadth of detail his sharpened senses usually granted—though since his faculties appeared to have abandoned him, that wasn't particularly striking—but the acrid tang of scorched earth and burning timber was discernable nonetheless.

From his vantage point, he couldn't spot the smoke's origin, but he'd witnessed the orbs of light gathering on the horizon. Some sort of energy bombs. They'd reminded him loosely of Karasu's power, and Kurama had allowed himself one absurd, fanciful imagining, letting his finely tuned ingenuity conjure up a reality in which Karasu had somehow survived the Dark Tournament and waited all these years to extract his revenge. Then he'd shoved that nonsense away, fled the exposed hillock where he'd awoken, and hidden himself here, in a scraggly, misbegotten bush, safe from prying eyes—at least for the time being.

The last bomb had fallen ten minutes prior, and considering the former speed of the salvos, Kurama suspected the bombardment had ceased for now. Which meant he could afford to divide his attention.

Ears straining to pick up any indicator of an approaching enemy, Kurama captured a leaf of the bush that had become his hideaway. He caught it between his pointer finger and thumb, rubbing its membrane along his fingertips. Definitely not Japanese. Without a chance for detailed analysis, he'd been unable to ascertain if the surrounding birches were those native to Japan or not, but this shrub most assuredly wasn't.

Its name rose out of habit, memory pulling it forth. For years after assuming Shuichi's human form, he'd studied the plants of Human World, seeking to unravel which native wildlife might prove useful in light of his talents. A lack of access to Demon World resources in his early years had hampered him, and he'd itched to pad out his arsenal.

He'd crossed this shrub in those studies, though it had never merited value for him.

 _Elaeagnus angustifolia._

More colloquially known as silver berry. Or wild olive.

Or—the title that mattered now—Russian olive.

Which could've placed this glade and the fields beyond nearly anywhere in Eastern Europe, but it was a start, and it was confirmation of what he'd already expected. This was _not_ Japan. But he suspected it wasn't truly Europe either.

The land was too deserted—not of buildings, but of people—and those bombs had been too obvious. If this was Human World—as it appeared intent on pretending to be—such a barrage would've drawn too much attention, even in the most desolate stretches of Russia.

But if it wasn't Human World, what was it?

And—just as importantly—where in this vast expanse were his teammates?

There was no way of knowing how close or far Yusuke, Hiei, and Kuwabara might be—technically, Kurama couldn't even be sure they'd been brought here, too. But presuming that they had, he had no means to determine if they'd been deposited near him or far astray.

So he'd have to search. Exhaustively, if necessary.

Liberating the leaf, Kurama backed out of cover. The sleeve of his baggy coveralls snagged on a branch, and he eyed the twig distastefully as he pulled free.

Plants never mistreated him so casually.

Pursing his lips and staving off a bout of seething rage at the loss of his demon energy, he turned uphill, putting the ravaged field behind him. Locating the others began with understanding his surroundings, and a comprehensive view of the local landscape could be best achieved from a high vantage point—not unlike the summit of this hill.

Twenty meters farther on, the hillock jutted upward, more a craggy cliff than a smooth knoll. Climbing it would expose him to unwanted eyes, but it was also the quickest way to achieve greater altitude, and the reward therein far outweighed the risk.

He spared one final glance back through the birch trees before surveying the cliff for handholds. Instinct a thousand years old tempted him to turn back, to search those fields for the spoils of war. He'd noticed the ticking of the counter in the corner of his vision, had watched it drop from _100_ to _99_ and then from _99_ to _98_. He knew it meant corpses lay somewhere in this wasteland, most likely directly in the path of those bombs, and those carcasses might have loot, weaponry or armor, any sort of tool that might better prepare him.

Or, and far more likely, the dead could be as defenseless as he was.

It was that knowledge that tamped down the jitters in his fingers.

No pilfering. Not now.

First, this cliff.

He made quick work of it, digging his fingers into cracks and wedging his toes into crevices. Whoever had exchanged his clothes for these drab coveralls had also swapped out his shoes, and the flimsy scraps they'd replaced his usual garb with did little to protect his feet as he vaulted ever higher. Still, in under ten minutes, he scaled the cliff and hauled himself over the upper lip, his shoulders aching in protest.

Ahead, more fields stretched. Another bluff loomed.

Fine.

Kurama would climb that one, too. But in a moment, not quite yet.

Lacing his hands behind his head, he kept his back straight as he turned to survey the land behind him. He ached to bend over and rest, but doing so would only serve to compress his lungs, and right now, he couldn't afford to fetter his recovery, not without his demon energy to hasten along the process.

Besides, he wanted a proper view of the fields below.

From here, he could see the impact zone, an utterly decimated stretch of earth, roughly two soccer fields wide. Gaping craters pockmarked the terrain, smoke and ash blown from the smoldering ruins on a consistent breeze. Hovel-like buildings dotted the western edge of the blast region, and off to the east, he thought he saw two figures, but the hills swallowed them up in seconds, and with his sight merely human, not acute as usual, he couldn't make out any details that indicated who they might be.

Friend or enemy?

Who was to say?

Right now, not Kurama. Answers remained out of reach. But the second bluff was waiting, and at its peak, more altitude. He'd have clues soon.

Then he'd puzzle out the rest.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **98**_ Alive

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

Hibana led Yusuke east.

She kept an even pace, a rolling stride that ate up terrain unrelentingly. It wasn't long before his breath grew ragged, his body—still stripped of his energy—unable to keep up what he would've considered nothing more than a jog just yesterday. Now, his lungs burned, his legs straining.

He wouldn't admit that, though, not to this new, strange partner of his.

She seemed fine, and not just in the sense that her lungs apparently hadn't betrayed her and begun plotting her an untimely death by suffocation. Unlike him, the bomb hadn't pushed her to the brink of death. If she'd truly used her only med kit on him, she'd emerged from the explosion almost entirely unharmed.

Probably because she still had access to her energy. Because she'd been able to teleport away or disappear or whatever it was she could do.

Well, wasn't that oh-so-spiffy for her.

The route she took carried them past a bunch of low-lying buildings flung across the field, then up into bumpy hills. As the incline steepened, it took everything in him to keep from twisting an ankle, but Hibana's footing was sure. Confident and balanced. The way _he_ usually was.

Yusuke had his guesses as to why, but running at this clip made the words impossible to get out. Anything he tried to say would likely emerge as nothing more than a bunch of gibberish pants. And curses.

A lot of curses.

Instead, he tried to make sense of the rest of her.

She looked Japanese—and her name backed that assumption up—even though this place wasn't. Which seemed like useful information, except that Yusuke didn't have a single damn idea what to do with it. Kurama probably would. But then, _of course,_ he would, because the fox was a flipping genius and always knew too much for his own good. At this point, Kurama had probably already figured out exactly where they were and moved to the next step—getting the hell out of here.

Yusuke wasn't that far along.

He was still hung up on Hibana. Her small, rounded chin. Her straight, flat nose. The dusting of freckles across her cheekbones. A slew of dull, ordinary features. Like she was just some regular chick off the street in Sarayashiki. The kind Kuwabara kept insisting Yusuke should try dating—to help him get over Keiko or whatever.

Not that he was still hung up on Keiko.

He was over all that bullshit.

Mostly.

Yet here was this girl, who'd come running into what was basically a minefield just to save his ass. To 'squad up' with him.

Why? Why take that risk? Why partner with a complete stranger who was about to kick the bucket for the third time in his idiot life?

And on top of that, how had she done it to begin with? She'd been teleporting—or whatever the heck it was that had her popping in and out of sight—and that meant she still had access to her energy. But if she had her powers, why didn't he?

At long last, after what had to be at least an hour, maybe even two, she decelerated, her stride dropping to a casual lope as the hills flattened out. A paved road took shape off to their left, but she kept clear of it, their path following the road's curve without actually carrying them onto its crumbling concrete.

Thanks to their slower gait, Yusuke managed to suck down enough air to ask, "Where are we going?"

"Need supplies." The words came out short and stuttered, and he realized he'd been wrong about how well she'd been handling their breakneck run. She hid it well, keeping her breathing steady even though her body clearly ached for more, but when she spoke, she couldn't hide her exhaustion.

On the one hand, thank fuck he wasn't the weak link here.

On the other, this meant they were both vulnerable, and that was… not so great.

"But where?" he pressed. A downed tree trunk jutted up from the dry grasses, and he leapt over it, windmilling his arms to keep his balance as he landed. Hibana's own jump wasn't nearly as graceless. "There's nothing here."

Wordlessly, she pointed ahead, and Yusuke whipped his head up in time to spot the roof of a distant building emerge over the treetops. "Not true."

Well, okay, fine.

But he couldn't have _known_ that.

Sullen, he said nothing more, focusing on matching her strides as they churned across the last stretch. With each step, the building drew more clearly into view, the trees thinning until he could see a broad, featureless wall through the branches. A gaping, double-wide doorway waited for them, and the slant of the sun turned whatever hid within black as pitch.

What was this place?

A warehouse? But why? All the way out in the middle of nowhere was a pretty shit spot for a warehouse to spring up. What idiot would build one here?

Hibana stopped at the tree line.

Yusuke lurched to a halt, breaking the cover of the trees by a step before she snagged his collar and yanked him backward. The tattered remains of his shirt tore completely, and he shrugged out of the scraps as he shot her a glare. "What the hell? Aren't we going in there?"

She didn't spare him even a moment's attention, her mud-brown eyes locked on the warehouse's wide-open doors. "You always charge in head first and ask questions once you're dead?"

He winced. "Seeing how I almost just bit it back there, ya think maybe it's too soon for death jokes?"

"Never too soon."

Gesturing for him to follow, she slunk sideways through the underbrush, beating a course around the warehouse. Its side walls were even less exciting than the front, but Hibana seemed to find what she was looking for.

She pointed toward a small door in a remote corner of the building. "That's our entry point. We're going in, gathering supplies, and getting out. Looting is key this early in the Match—"

"You keep saying that," Yusuke interrupted. He latched onto her elbow, his fingers swallowing it up. "Why? What's it mean?"

"Not the time—"

"Oh, shove off," he spat through gritted teeth. "You're the one who wanted to work together. Well, clue me the fuck in, teammate, because I'm running out of chill."

"Keep your damn voice down or you'll get us both killed." As if leading by example, the command came as nothing but a whisper, completely calm, lacking even a trace of the boiling frustration that simmered in Yusuke's veins. "Do you want to gear up and live? Or hash out the particulars and die, Urameshi? Take your pick, but you'll have to find someone else to answer your questions, because I'm not hanging around in the open, gossiping like schoolgirls."

Because he was dumb—because his heart was a damn traitor—Yusuke thought instantly of Keiko. Of the stupid uniform she wore in junior high. Of the sexy one she wore in high school. A schoolgirl. Not really a gossiper.

But still a schoolgirl.

And hearing Hibana hiss that title like an insult, Yusuke realized he'd been awfully fucking dim to think she was anything at all like a chick he'd run into in Sarayashiki. Through the charred edges of her coveralls, muscle rippled beneath her skin. She was like a tightly wound spring—or, more accurately, like the hammer of a gun, cocked and ready to pop off.

It was so fucking obvious. In everything from how she moved to the darting glances she kept casting toward the warehouse. She was primed for a fight—itching for one, even.

And he had the sinking suspicion she wasn't used to losing.

Then again, neither was he.

"Just give me something," he said, voice as low as hers. "Anything."

The hard cut of her glare softened, and the clenched muscles in her jaw unwound. "Fine. But quickly. More later. What do you need to know to get your ass in gear?"

Picking just one question was like yanking out his tooth. "What is this place? Where are we?"

Okay, technically that was two questions. But whatever. The gist had been the same.

"The Unknown Grounds." Her gaze shifted back to the warehouse, but he couldn't tell if it was to avoid him or just because she couldn't bare leaving herself exposed. "Heard of a battle royale? Because you're in one. A hundred players in a Match. Only one winner." Her lips twisted sideways, but it took her long seconds to add, "Actually, scratch that. Squad rules are in play, so a whole team can win."

A battle royale?

"Huh. Like the preliminary rounds of the Demon World Tournaments?"

"Not quite."

He cocked his head.

She sighed. "We need to move."

"Yeah, yeah. I get it. But explain that last bit. How is this different?"

Again, there was that moment of hesitation—this time, accompanied by a flexing of her jaw. "Because there are no mercy rules, Urameshi. You only leave the Match once it's over, and the Match doesn't end until only one squad is left. The Unknown Grounds play for keeps."

At his side, Yusuke balled his hand into a fist, straining until his knuckles hurt, until his nails cut crescents into his palm. "I was with my friends," he ground out haltingly. "The bastard that tranqed me and tossed me in this hell probably got them, too. You think they're here?"

Shadows shuttered across her eyes. Her thin, chapped lips leeched of color. "Your guess is as good as mine." She squared her shoulders. "We need to move now, Urameshi. Stay together and follow my lead." With that, she turned her back on him and—head up, body low—took a step into the clearing surrounding the warehouse.

"Hibana."

She stopped.

"What, Urameshi?"

"If my friends are here, what then?"

"Then you find them. You squad up. And you fight your way out."

Right.

Fighting.

That he could do. Spirit energy or no spirit energy. Demon energy or no demon energy.

He flexed his hands. Into fists and back out. In, out. Over and over. A steadying, bracing rhythm that carried him into the open on Hibana's heels. If he had to be fourteen-year-old Yusuke again, heady with arrogant rage, a chip riding on his shoulder large enough to sink Japan, so be it.

He'd fight. And he'd win.

Or, at the very least, he'd take these bullshit Unknown Grounds down with him.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **95**_ Alive

Kuwabara was stuck on an island.

A big island, yeah, but still an island.

He'd come to on top of a gigantic hill, his head aching like he'd drunk a lake's worth of booze, though for once in his life, the overstimulation had nothing to do with spirit awareness. In fact, it took him less time than it did to open his eyes to realize that he couldn't sense _anything_ at all.

Which was all sorts of screwed up.

But compared to being stuck on this island, missing spirit energy kinda seemed like a horseshit excuse for a problem. Because in the last two hours, from the top of his hill, he'd seen the sorts of hell that more than warranted the shaking he was doing in his non-existent boots.

Bombs to the south. By his count, those had lasted twenty minutes or so. Judging from the tally in the corner of his vision, the bombs had either killed two people or two unlucky souls had just happened to die elsewhere at the same time.

Then, to the north, faint screaming had started as soon as the bombs stopped, and he'd run to the cliffs' edge just in time to watch one man strangle the life out of another on a sandy beach far below, the ocean crashing against the shoreline at their backs. It took a full minute after the screaming cut out for the _Alive_ counter to drop to _97_. A minute after that, the survivor had thrown the body into the spray.

Kuwabara hadn't hung around to see what the killer did next.

He'd headed east, trying to keep a low profile—an almost impossible feat thanks to his stupid height and big ass bones—but the murderer on the beach seemed like someone Kuwabara needed to stay very, very clear of, so he kept fleeing, slinking from tree to tree, rock to rock. Too bad in a half hour he'd only made it what he'd guess to be half-a-mile before hitting the eastern lip of the bluff.

More death awaited him there.

A three-way fight this time.

A trio of combatants were at war in a dusty parking lot sprawled before a half-collapsed gas station. Beyond them, more ocean unfurled, a gray-green sheet of water stretching as far as he could see, spanning the horizon in all directions, except for the land back west and to the south. Could be that he'd been left at the intersection of two shorelines, but the sinking sensation in Kuwabara's chest had him pretty damn sure the sea didn't stop anywhere soon on the eastern shore. Probably not on the southern one either.

He may not have his awareness, but he still trusted his gut.

Hence—this was an island.

At the scene of the battle down below, two flipped over cars lay in the rubble of the gas station, and a third was parked haphazardly on the road, criss-crossing four different spots at once. From the way the trio of fighters kept their tussle away from the vehicle, Kuwabara was willing to bet it was the prize they'd staked their lives on.

Two men had ganged up on the third fighter, but even at this vast distance, Kuwabara spotted the glow of energy around the lone woman's knuckles, and though he couldn't tell if it was spirit or demon in nature, he knew who was destined to win that skirmish.

He turned back the way he'd come before the first death came through, and he was already farther west than he'd been when he'd woken by the time the counter ticked to _95_. That fight had run long. Maybe it had turned into a chase after the first fighter went down.

It didn't matter really.

He was just glad he hadn't had a front row seat.

If this place, wherever it was, truly was an island, and if the rest of his team had been knocked out and tossed here, too, then they were somewhere close. Kuwabara just had to find them. _Before_ they were strangled or punched to death with energy attacks they couldn't defend against.

Easier said than done.

But it was the only option he could entertain. Because the other option? The one where Yusuke and Kurama and Hiei _weren't_ here?

That he couldn't stomach.

Still, Kuwabara couldn't find them if he was dead, and since it seemed the other people stranded here had already decided this was some kind of death match, that meant he had to keep his head low, had to go unnoticed—had to, despite all odds, avoid every other living person in this place _except_ his three friends.

Three out of ninety-five.

Or, to be technical, three out of ninety-four, since he didn't have to avoid himself.

Awfully crud odds. He didn't need his passing marks in statistics to work out that much—but Kuwabara had faced worse. The endless sea of husks outside Maze Castle. The preliminary of the Dark Tournament. Heck, the _rounds_ of the Dark Tournament. Sensui and his Seven.

Of course, he'd had his Spirit Sword then. And his team, most of the time. But he couldn't dwell on that part. People here had energy—that woman on the cliff did, anyway—and that meant it was possible to get his spirit energy back. He just had to figure out how.

That left him two goals: find his team and unlock his powers.

Easy.

Or not.

His escape route west, away from the brawl on the cliffs, had taken him into the flat, center plateau of the broad hill where he'd woken up. Around him sprawled ruins, walls so crumbled down to nothing he couldn't even piece together which ones had once connected. In the gaps between, he tramped through campfires burned down to ash and blackened charcoal. If people had ever lived here permanently, it had been years upon years ago, and whoever had passed through since had treated the place like Yusuke treated the couch Kuwabara had let him surf for weeks now.

Which was to say, they'd treated it like shit.

Nevertheless, he spotted a glint of metal in the rubble, and he picked his way through the weathered rocks toward it. When he reached the glimmer, he bent down and scooped away dirt and loose stones until he revealed a metal case. Its latch was rusted, and he had to pry it loose, but he tugged until the lid creaked open.

Beneath, he discovered gear.

Proper, sturdy clothes. A thick jacket. Canvas pants. A belt fitted with utility clips. Strong, hard-toed boots.

Then a layer of food supplies. MREs—meals, ready to eat. A canteen, already full of water. Protein bars. Jerky.

And under all that, at the very bottom of the crate, he dug out a weapon. A single, serrated knife, with a leather-wrapped grip. The metal shone beneath the bright sun, ripples dancing across the steel edge.

It wasn't much. It sure as hell wasn't a Spirit Sword.

But it was a start.

And he'd take what he could get.

* * *

AN: Just like last chapter, I'll be posting a map of the boys' current locations on my Tumblr soon (probably Saturday). Find me at hereaafteryyh over there! I'll also definitely get up a post about the inspiration I'm drawing from PUBG this weekend. I really wanted to get that up some time in the last two weeks, but life has really gotten the best of me, so that fell by the wayside. You know what they say about the best laid plans...

In any event, the gang isn't far from each other. Or, at least, they all woke up within sight of the bombs. Too bad it seems they aren't heading in any of the same directions. Hehehe.

Huge, gigantic thanks to those of you who reviewed last chapter. Y'all are the best: Laine Inverse, MissLini, backoff22, WistfulSin, and typiicaltaylor!


	4. Gearing Up

_**Chapter 4: Gearing Up**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **95**_ Alive

Hibana entered the warehouse like a career criminal might breach a vault.

Cautious. Controlled. Calculated.

A ghost on silent feet.

Yusuke would've said she moved like a man, but that was a load of misogynist crap, because Genkai had that exact same quality. A surety in her step. A heaviness in her heel. Like she was trained for this. Like she could more than handle any danger lurking inside the warehouse's bland walls.

Like she was a killer even other killers had best fear.

Yusuke associated it with men because it was how Hiei sauntered, how Kurama strode whenever he stopped pretending to be harmless Minamino Shuichi, how the hundreds of demons Yusuke had met over the last nine years walked, but it wasn't just a guy thing. The female badasses he'd encountered possessed it, too.

The rest of them didn't hold their hand like Hibana did, though.

It was her right hand, tucked down by her hip, the fingers extended forward and fanned out. Kinda like an invisible baseball rested in her palm.

Yusuke got the sense that if she flicked her wrist, whatever lurked in the space between her fingers wouldn't be invisible anymore, and if asked to bet on what it might be, he'd wager he'd seen it before—a ball of blurring, crimson light, same as the energy she'd used to detonate the bomb over his head an hour ago, preventing it from making landfall.

For his part, Yusuke tried to be as silent as she was.

 _Tried_ being the key word.

When he was equipped with his energy, he could move nearly as noiselessly as Hiei—not Kurama and his foxy grace, but still, Yusuke had gotten pretty damn good, if he had to say so himself. But now? He was clumsy as a newborn horse, a big, fumbling idiot inside a body that no longer fit him right.

And he fucking _hated_ it.

Hibana had definitely noticed. There was no way she hadn't. But she seemed intent on ignoring him, her focus locked entirely on the warehouse's side door as she eased it open. Even under her gentle touch, the hinges whined, and she breathed an impressively vile curse, but a second later she was over the threshold, slipping into the shadows within, and Yusuke scrambled to follow.

The door opened into a cavernous space, metal shelving racks toppled everywhere he looked, crates and boxes scattered across the floor, their contents spilling onto the unfinished concrete. Weak light from distant, dusty skylights two stories above provided the only illumination.

Hibana spoke in a whisper, "Seems deserted. Doesn't mean it is. Keep close. Within earshot." Her dark eyes cut sideways, her brows arcing downward. "Not shouting earshot. Whisper earshot. Got it?"

What he wanted to say was that he was already sick of her bossing him around, that he took orders about as well an untrained bull—and that he was just as nasty.

What he actually said was: "Roger that."

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't address his sarcastic mutter. Instead, she slipped around the legs of a collapsed shelf and murmured, "Gather anything that looks even remotely valuable. Backpacks. Clothes. Weapons. Food. Canteens. Med kits. Anything and everything. We can toss what we don't need later."

As if to prove her own point about the lengths to which he should scavenge, she stopped next to a heap of rubble, pulled a gray t-shirt out from beneath a soggy, cardboard box, and yanked off the tattered scraps of her coveralls. Beneath, she wore only a sports bra and underwear, but she tugged on the shirt, then found a pair of black, durable pants ten feet farther on and drew those up over her bare legs.

It was all so business-like, done like it was the most normal thing in the world to strip naked in front of some jackass she'd just met. She never glanced at Yusuke once, didn't even seem to care that he could've been perving out over her body.

Her complete disinterest turned the ordeal from something that could've been thoroughly hot into an experience pretty much identical to changing in a locker room during junior high. He'd sooner have gawked at Kuwabara's junk than been turned on by Hibana's brisk strip down.

Which was probably for the best.

If these Grounds were as threatening as she said they were, getting distracted by sexy girls was the last thing he needed.

"Get searching, Urameshi," she murmured when he stayed stationary. "I want out of here in the next half hour."

"Right. Shit. On it."

She tossed him a look and sealed a finger over her lips. No anger heated her gaze, just disapproval and the same flat, even-keeled focus that had filled her since the moment she stepped out of cover back outside. Wincing, he realized how loudly he'd responded.

 _Damn it_.

He shrugged apologetically, and a mantra of further swears ran on repeat across his tongue, but he trapped them all behind his teeth as he set about unearthing clothes. Piece by piece, he found a full get up, stockpiling it all as he collected other gear he stumbled across and shoved the lot into a canvas backpack Hibana tossed his way.

First came brown pants that had been strewn across an empty patch of concrete. Then a powder blue, long-sleeved shirt he retrieved from the top level of the only standing shelving unit he could see in the whole warehouse. Last of all, a set of drab sneakers he dug out of a crate.

He expected none of it to fit. After all, the pieces Hibana had grabbed seemingly at random had fit her snugly, and she was skinnier than he was. But when he pulled the shirt over his head, it sat perfectly around his shoulders, just the right degree of tailored not to restrict his movement, but also not so loose that it'd snag on passing obstacles once they returned to the forest. Same with the pants. No belt even necessary.

Which could've been great luck.

But the unease prickling across his neck made him doubt it.

"How'd we both manage to find outfits just the right size?" he asked, pitching his voice as low as he could.

Hibana didn't pause in rifling through a crate, shoving packets of dried food into a backpack hanging off her right shoulder. "The Grounds aren't a real place, Urameshi. The rules of physics don't apply." Stuffing a final pouch into her bag, she swung his way. "Anything you find will be perfect for you."

The goosebumps on his neck crept down his spine. "Why?"

"Because the Gamerunner doesn't care how good you are at scrounging for clothes. He wants to see a fight." Her gaze skipped away, and he waited in silence until it returned. When it did, her eyes glinted like steel. "This is a battle royale, not a shopping simulator."

Yusuke hefted his backpack, rattling the contents at her. "Then why are we grabbing all this shit? Why not get out there and fight our way out of here?"

She scoffed one low, heated exhale, then wove through the mess until she was right at his side. "You want to find your friends, don't you? Well, how do you plan to do that if you're dead?" Before he could answer, she drew closer still, jabbing a finger into his chest. "You have no energy, Urameshi. I do. Other players will. But _you_ don't. Before we can find your friends, before we can 'fight our way out of here,' you need to be armed. That starts with basic supplies. Then we get you energy. _Then_ we take on the field."

The condescension in her tone made him want to punch something. Her, preferably.

But he hadn't missed her threat.

 _She_ had energy. _He_ didn't.

"Why do you still have powers when I don't?" he asked, straining to keep his voice as quiet as hers.

Without a word, she pulled back the finger she'd prodded him with. Her hand took on that odd shape from before, fingers extended forward and spread out as if to clutch a ball. This time, though, they weren't empty.

Red energy hovered over her palm. Six spheres of it total, five smaller ones rotating around a stationary center.

"You mean this?" she asked.

He jerked his chin in a sharp nod.

The spheres faded, her fingers falling open. "And this?"

As she spoke, she melded out of sight. Disappeared as if she'd never existed, like she was just some mirage his dying brain had conjured up to make his passing less pitiful. She definitely hadn't moved. Just poofed into oblivion, leaving only her soft, musical voice in his ears.

But as quick as she'd vanished, she returned.

Her hand moved to her throat, and she tugged on two chains he hadn't noticed before, pulling a pair of dog tags free from the collar of her new shirt. They tumbled against her chest, twin silver rectangles, thin with rounded corners. Across each, a number had been engraved.

 _006_ and _041_.

"When players enter the Grounds," she said, "their skills are stripped away and embedded in tags like these. Find a tag and equip it, and you get its power. Simple enough—if you can actually find a tag." She tapped a nail against the first nameplate, the one etched with a _006_. "I got lucky. I found my own." The spheres of energy appeared in her palm again, then dissolved once more. "41 was a fortunate find."

"The teleporting?"

"More like cloaking. Or, as I like to call it, ghosting."

Yusuke ground his teeth together. "And what the fuck does that mean?"

"It doesn't teleport me. Just renders me imperceptible for short periods of time. Or, to be technical, shifts me to a different plane. In other words, cloaking."

Teeth still clenched, he frowned as she tucked the dog tags back beneath her shirt. "How'd you manage to get two powers already?"

"More dumb luck, I guess. I woke up near them."

"And you just so happened to know your energy would come back if you put them on?"

She snorted. "Of course not." Hoisting her backpack onto both shoulders, she started combing through the scattered supplies again. "I knew what the Grounds were before I ever ended up here."

"How?"

No answer came, and though Yusuke wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake it out of her, he knew that would get him nowhere, so instead he returned to scavenging, ranging farther across the warehouse in search of supplies, not even bothering to keep her close. Screw her rules about staying in whisper earshot. Screw her orders, period.

And screw this whole damn place for that matter.

By the time they reunited at the far wall of the warehouse, he'd filled a second backpack with supplies and managed to leverage them both onto his back. Her own bag was fit to bursting, and he had to imagine they'd picked this place clean of anything worth having.

Hibana had acquired a jacket at some point. Its black contours hugged her shoulders, the fabric thick and heavy, especially around her torso, and it reminded him of a bulletproof vest, padded and reinforced against trauma. The sleeves were thinner, more flexible, and it had a hood she'd drawn up over her hair. Beneath its hem, her face fell into shadow.

It was only as she led him to a side door that formed a mirror image of the one through which they'd entered that she finally answered him.

She paused there, on the threshold, one hand on the doorknob, ready to return them to the wilderness outside and the late afternoon sun. With the door cracked, a blade of sunlight lanced across her face, banishing the shadows beneath her hood.

"You asked how I knew of the Grounds… Let's just say I ran in the wrong circles, Urameshi." She yanked the door open, ignoring its squealing hinges. "Eventually, they closed in on me. Now I'm here. Just like you."

That was it.

All the explanation she was willing to give

But as she slunk beyond the warehouse, head on a swivel, ready for anything, he couldn't shake the feeling that, no, she was nothing like him.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **93**_ Alive

Kuwabara debated making camp at the top of the hill.

The sun had started setting by the time he finished picking over the meager supplies littered among the ruins, but in the end, all his rooting through the loose scree only turned up a heap of junk. A few rolls of bandages. Some pill bottles. Painkillers, maybe? Two of what seemed to be energy drinks. The language printed across the aluminum cans—Russian, possibly—was illegible to him, and he couldn't begin to work out why the heck someone had tossed unopened cans around a deserted fire pit.

But then, none of this really made any sense, so the littering habits of strangers probably weren't important.

The best gear he'd found still came from that first chest he'd opened, but he piled the rest into his pack regardless, hauled it over his shoulder, and then loitered, uncertain where to go. Even though the hill had been safe so far, he doubted it would stay that way. It was too exposed, and high ground was only an advantage if he had the means to hold it.

Which Kuwabara most definitely did not.

At least, not right now.

Still, he hesitated.

Where could he go instead? Everywhere he'd tried so far had just turned up bloodthirsty enemies. Bombs to the south, the beach strangler to the north, the woman with the glowing fists to the east.

That left only the unexplored west.

Traversing that way would mean abandoning the hill entirely. Even from the midst of the ruins, he could tell this plateau began to slope down not far westward. That route necessitated losing his vantage point—and it would probably make him stupidly vulnerable to attack.

But it wasn't like he had other options.

And so, clutching the serrated knife he'd found, wishing desperately for his Spirit Sword instead, Kuwabara left the ruins, striking out toward the setting sun. As he reached the last of the rubble, he paused a final time and turned back, frowning at the scattered stones spread across the clearing.

Most likely, he wasn't coming back here. He'd gathered everything he could, and even if he hadn't, it didn't offer much in terms of protection. There was no telling how big the island was, but it had to have hideouts better than this one.

Yet…

Just because he wouldn't return didn't mean Yusuke or the others might not stumble across this place. If they did, it'd be awfully dumb not to leave a clue behind for them.

But what?

What sign could he leave that would direct them, but not anyone else? He had no personal belongings left. He didn't have his energy. He didn't have anything.

There had to be something, though. He may not be Kurama, but he was still smart. He could work out a hint—some symbol only the guys would get.

The last crimson rays of the sunset were slanting across the ruins, gilding the crumbled walls in buttery light. If he didn't act quick, he'd have nothing but washed out moonlight to work with, and that would do him no good if he was trying to leave behind a sign. He needed something fast. He needed—

Something like the red shirt wedged under a rock to his left.

In the gathering twilight, the fabric looked almost purple, but once he yanked it free and held it up, blowing dirt from the cloth, it was crimson, sure enough.

Red.

Like the red string of fate.

The one he'd once thought tied him to Yukina—and even if he knew better now, even if it hadn't worked out between them, he knew a red thread linked him to someone. It had to.

The guys knew that. Yusuke rolled his eyes at it, and Kurama only ever gave Kuwabara that pitying smile he hated, and Hiei met any mention of the string of fate with his usual derisive rage—though less so these days than he once had—but no matter which way Kuwabara cut it, they _knew_ about the string. They'd associate it with him.

Wouldn't they?

Hopefully.

He had nothing else to go on. Red string would have to do.

Unsheathing the serrated knife, he hacked a strip off the shirt, then shoved the rest of the fabric into the side pocket of his backpack. As the last of the sun disappeared below the horizon, he crossed to the tallest support column left amongst the rubble and tied the shred of cloth around a jutting length of rebar.

When Kuwabara stepped back, a helpless laugh bubbled on his lips. The cloth was so tiny, so easily missed. Sighing, he grabbed up a sharp-edged stone and carved a rough _W_ into the pillar. If one of the guys managed to spot the string—and that was a really big damn _if_ —maybe they'd come close enough to see the _W_ and realize he'd headed west.

Maybe.

Probably not.

But maybe.

For now, that'd have to be enough.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **89**_ Alive

Six more combatants had died.

Hibana explained the counters Yusuke could see in the corner of his eye while leading him east, down the steep hillside they'd climbed to reach the warehouse. The top line displayed how many players he'd killed; the bottom, how many remained alive.

How twisted was that?

It was exactly the kind of shit that fucked people up in the head. Because, yeah, Yusuke had killed before—Toguro, Sensui, nameless demons he'd gone out of his way not to count—but he'd never had that number shoved in his face. It wasn't something he dwelled on, and it sure as hell wasn't something he was proud of. Yet there was that counter, hovering at the edge of his vision, and once he killed—and Hibana made it painfully clear that he inevitably would—that number wouldn't leave him until he escaped this hell.

Heck, there were probably already other contestants with tallies on their vision. Not just zeroes, but actual kill counts. Some of the eleven who'd died may have fallen to bombs like he nearly had, but Yusuke doubted death-by-demented-explosive-meteor-shower accounted for all of them.

Those deaths had to happen at someone's hands.

And now, only eighty-nine players remained.

He almost snorted.

 _Only_ eighty-nine. Yeah-fucking-right.

As if there weren't still eighty-five bastards left who wanted him dead—or eighty-four, depending on how Hibana factored in. Separated from his team and stripped of his spirit and demon energy, that number was staggeringly high.

As much to distract himself as anything, Yusuke cleared his throat and drew Hibana's attention. "Where are we headed?" he murmured once she hummed in acknowledgment.

From the warehouse, they'd gone due east, ditching the setting sun at their backs. It had fallen below the summit of the hill—or they had; whatever—an hour ago, and now only the rising moon was left to guide them. The pale moonlight did little to illuminate the underbrush that had sprung up as they descended further down the hill, and Yusuke's every step had become a plunge into the unknown. If he didn't break an ankle during this hike, it'd be a fucking miracle.

"To the coast," she said, sparing him a glance. In the dark, with her hood still pulled up, she'd morphed into a ghoul, her features completely lost to the shadows. "We'll follow it south."

"Why not just go south now?"

"The ocean will protect one of our sides. The surf gives us one less vulnerability to worry about."

Ducking beneath a low-hanging branch, Yusuke squinted ahead, trying to spot the glint of moonlight off water. He discovered nothing but inky darkness. "What's stopping us from making a break for it? I bet we could find a boat if there're houses on the water, then leave the Grounds entirely."

Hibana's laugh hissed like the wind through the pine needles overhead. "There will be boats, sure. But you can't sail out of the Grounds, Urameshi. This place isn't real. It won't let you go."

"You've said that already. Yet it's trying to off me, so what's the deal? How can I die here if it isn't actually real?"

"You ask too many questions."

" _You_ don't give any answers."

She shook her head. "Look, I'm just trying to get us somewhere safe, somewhere we can ride out the night, then I'll happily tell you every little detail you need to know. In the meantime, if you can manage to keep your voice down, I'll answer what I can—but know that if we die, I'm pinning it squarely on your shoulders."

"Duly noted." A bush they passed caught at his Yusuke's, leafless branches snagging in the cloth—so much for the close-fitting fabric preventing that—but he jerked free and said, "First question, same as before: how can we die here if this place isn't real?"

Her answer took long seconds to manifest, and when it did, it wasn't really an answer at all. "What do you remember before waking up? As in, right before."

He wracked his memory, trying to draw up anything more than that asshole in the Special Defense Force uniform who'd captured him. What happened after the man hauled him down the hall? There'd been weird noises. Metallic clacking. Hissing air. Then padded cushions beneath his back.

"I was put in a machine," he said slowly. "Like one of those big rigs they use to scan people for cancer—except I don't think the bastard who threw me in there was concerned about my health."

Hibana didn't laugh, but Yusuke thought he could hear traces of mirthless humor in her voice as she answered. "Rig is a surprisingly good word for it. What you were put in is called an Immersion Chamber, and in turn, it placed you here, in the Unknown Grounds. In essence, this is virtual reality. Except the dying isn't virtual. If you flat-line in the Grounds, your Immersion Chamber will deliver a fatal toxin to your system. Die in this fake body, and you die in real life, too."

A chill rippled up Yusuke's forearms. "Why?"

"Stakes, Urameshi. You've got to have a reason to care about the fight." One of her hands, covered by a fingerless glove he hadn't seen her find, slipped inside her hood, rubbing at what he guessed might be her forehead. "What better way is there to force your investment than putting your life on the line?"

"That's fucked up."

"Yup."

Grimacing, he clambered over a rock jutting from the earth. "Next question, then. How'd you end up in here?"

A beat of quiet stretched between them. Then, she picked up her pace, and he had to rush to keep up, crashing through the undergrowth.

"I don't know," she said. "My memory is hazy."

"That makes two of us."

The woods opened up suddenly, spitting them out onto the last, rocky stretches of the hill's slope. At last, the ocean took shape ahead, moonlight shining off rolling waves. They were probably still half a mile out from the water, but from their vantage point, Yusuke could see the shore stretching for ages to the south. To the north, the shoreline curved, arcing back to the west.

"Is this an island?" he asked, startled.

"Two of them, technically." Hibana loped down the rocks, all but racing now that they'd put the forest behind them. He gave chase. "We're on the larger of the two, but if you want a dog tag and energy, the best place to grab one is the southern island. We'll head there tomorrow."

"So you know this place that well, huh?" The backpacks Yusuke had stuffed with supplies thudded against his spine with every step, jarring, kicking the breath from his already pathetic lungs, but he refused to let Hibana pull ahead. "You knew about the tags, and you already know the layout of this hell hole. Yet you still let yourself get stuck in here?"

"It wasn't a choice, Urameshi."

"Right. Duh. But still. If I had even a clue what that asshole was planning for me, he never would have caught me."

"You keep referencing a single person," she said, slowing her blistering run a notch so she could look at him properly. "Do you know who put you here?"

Nose crinkling, Yusuke glared at the rapidly approaching waterline, his feet thudding against the loose shale the hill had given way to. "I may have mucked that part up."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Look, it's a long, stupid story, but me and my team were supposed to be catching this rogue, criminal guy who'd betrayed Spirit World. I should've paid attention during the briefing, but paying attention isn't really my thing…"

"So you know nothing about who got you."

Not a question.

He nodded anyway. "That about sums it up."

"Well, it sounds like the Gamerunner. If he put you in the Immersion Chamber, I don't know who else it could've been." Hibana huffed a snorting laugh. "Spirit World shouldn't have sent you against him unprepared—even if that lack of preparation was your own fault."

She said Spirit World like she was intimately familiar with it. A bit irreverent. Scornful in the way he usually was whenever Koenma and his goons came up.

Which was simultaneously weird _and_ not weird. Clearly, she was good at this shit. She had spirit energy, she knew what the Grounds were, and she wasn't bothered by his casual mentions of demons or Spirit World. All of that made some sort of jumbled sense, even if he had to make some leaping assumptions along the way.

But he couldn't work out where _she_ fit between all those pieces.

Nothing was lining up right. None of the clues were jigsawing together to form Keiko's precious boundaries of the puzzle, and without anything to guide him, Yusuke couldn't place Hibana amongst the mess.

Who was she? Human? Demon? Something else?

He'd still put his money on human—but with an edge. A half-hidden sharpness that could cut an unsuspecting victim to smithereens before they'd even realized they were bleeding.

And already, just hours into knowing her, he wanted to know _why_.

In the wake of her dig at Koenma, another lull overtook them, holding until the ground leveled off entirely and they hit the shore's sandy expanse. Then, just as she had outside the warehouse, Hibana sank into that low, alert stance, her hand ready to summon those strange spheres of hers at any moment.

She pointed ahead with her left hand, guiding his eyes to a tiny shack farther down the beach. "That'll do for the night."

Yusuke frowned at it, unimpressed by its sloping, sagging roof and rundown walls. "Really? That's our mighty stronghold?"

Not pausing to humor him, Hibana slunk down the beach, head on a constant swivel. "Once we're inside, we'll see the enemy coming long in advance, and come sunup, we'll follow the shoreline south. It's exactly the hiding spot we need."

Yusuke wasn't so sure he bought that, but he knew a fellow stubborn mule when he met one, and arguing with her wasn't worth the breath he'd waste. Yet even though he knew that, like he always seemed to with her, he had a question.

"How are you so good at this?"

With her back to him and her hood up and the wind playing tricks all around them, her voice could've come from anywhere and everywhere. The low, breathy laugh that accompanied it sent rippling shivers up his spine. "I've had tactical training, Urameshi." A second laugh chased the first into the night, but this one was throatier, full of not-so-hidden menace.

It set his heart racing.

"This is what I was made for."

* * *

AN: I finally got up the post about PUBG's inspiration for this fic earlier this week, and I also tossed up a mood board for the story, which was extremely fun to put together. It's got panes for each of the boys and Hibana, plus some general, story-oriented images. Find all that over at hereafteryyh on tumblr!

Additionally, the lovely, wonderful WistfulSin recommended a song to me for Hibana, and HOLY CRAP, it is so perfect for her. I listened to it on repeat while cleaning up this chapter. It's "Battlefield" by Svrcina. Check it out if you're interested!

Big, bombastic thanks to the fantastic folks who reviewed last chapter: Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, backoff22, and Shell1331.


	5. The Walkthrough

_**Chapter 5: The Walkthrough**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **89**_ Alive

Damp, musty air filled the shack's cramped interior.

Sand had gathered on the rotting floorboards, pooling in muddy, almost liquid puddles in the cracks between the wooden slats, and wind whistled through gaps where the roof met the walls, snaking icy fingers through Yusuke's newly acquired shirt.

Cold. Wet. Moldy.

The makings of a fan-freaking-tastic first night.

As Hibana dug through their packs, sorting supplies into piles, Yusuke rubbed at the goosebumps peppering his arms and muttered, "Isn't Hell supposed to be melt-your-face-off hot? Lava everywhere. Heat for days. All that crap. Not this soggy, clammy bullshit."

Hibana didn't look up. She'd already churned through the first two bags and had moved to the third. "Hell is a Human World myth. I figured you'd know that already, Urameshi."

He rolled his eyes. "So Limbo, then. Whatever. Point being, Spirit World should reassess its punishment system. Clearly, the worst bastards should be sent to this hell pit. Forget eternal damnation. Who needs that crap when you've got the Unknown Grounds?"

"Maybe you're already dead," she said, and a note of ringing amusement in her voice drew his gaze from the water collecting just to the left of his sneaker. When they'd arrived at this hut, she'd pushed back her hood and tucked her hair behind her ears, all practicality as she set to work. Now her dark eyes gleamed through the gloom, shining like slick oil. If not for the moonlight leaking through the window in the wall behind him, he wouldn't have been able to see the rest of her at all.

She tilted her head, chin jutting outward. "Maybe the Grounds are exactly what you've just described—Spirit World's worst torture, designed just for you."

It was a chilling thought.

But also a garbage one.

"Nah. Spirit World owes me. Big time." He bent his knees, pulling them in to his chest and looping his arms loosely around his shins. "Whenever I finally kick the bucket, Spirit World is gonna roll out the red carpet."

"So say they all."

Yusuke narrowed his eyes. "Don't proverb me. I'm not just blowing smoke."

"You don't think you are, but… Everyone's the hero of their own narrative, Urameshi. There isn't a soul alive that doesn't believe they accomplished grand feats—that they deserve recognition, in life and in death." She pulled a final item from the third backpack, then tossed the empty bag atop the first two. "Problem is: not everyone is right."

"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly _everyone_."

"Of course, _you_ aren't," she said, her tone rising and falling in a mocking, singsong rhythm.

He balled his left hand into a fist so tight his knuckles popped. "You're a condescending bitch, you know that?"

"And you're a hot-tempered, demanding ass." Hibana cracked a wicked grin. "We all have our faults."

Despite himself, a snorting snigger burbled in Yusuke's throat, bursting past his lips before he could stop it, and just like that, he was chuckling, no holds barred, head tossed back against the slimy wall, shoulders rocking with belly-deep laughter. His annoyance faded away, replaced by the strange realization that if he couldn't have his real teammates in a squad with him, Hibana seemed just about as perfect a substitute as he could've hoped for.

Unable to wrangle his smile into submission, he wiggled a hand free of the embrace he'd wound around his knees and flapped a dismissive wrist toward all her sorted goods. "Now that we've got that settled, teach me your ways, oh wise one. What's all this junk meant for?"

"It's not junk. These supplies are going to save your life."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

Humor creased around her eyes, but it seemed she was set on getting down to business, because no return joke flew. Which was fine. Yusuke was ready for answers. He'd waited long enough.

Hell, at this point, his patience was so godly that if he _did_ die in this stupid bloodbath, Spirit World might as well christen him a damn saint.

As Hibana reached for the first cluster of supplies she'd divvied out, she looked up at him and said, "Everything in the Grounds is a tool defined by its utility. In this case, an aide in whittling down your opponents." The pile in question was a meager stack of weapons—a few knives, a blunt club, an axe. Nothing special. Nothing he'd want to be armed with if he was facing down a foe who'd recovered a dog tag and the energy that came with it. As if she'd read his mind, she picked up a dagger and extended it to him, hilt first. "Don't underestimate the importance of melee combat. In tight confines—and there are plenty of those in the Grounds—a knife might save your life."

He balanced the blade in his hand, frowning at the rust darkening the steel. Its edge seemed sharp enough, but then again, swords and their more pathetic cousins weren't really his forte. That was more Hiei's shtick. Kuwabara's, too. But not Yusuke's. "I don't see you toting around a useless, little pig-sticker."

Hibana arched a brow. It formed a dark slash across her forehead, pulling his attention to the dirt smeared across her skin. Blood had crusted over the bridge of her nose, the beginnings of a scab taking shape where debris had gouged her while she'd saved his life. Yet even in the dark, even dirty and battered, she was impossible to look away from.

Seizing the club from the heap of weapons, she hoisted it, tossed it upward with a spin, then caught it deftly and thwacked the end into her palm. "This'll do."

Well, alrighty then.

"You planning on bashing some unsuspecting idiot's head in?" he drawled. "Seems awfully lowbrow for you."

Her eyebrow dropped out of its sarcastic arc. "A kill is a kill, Urameshi. Regardless of the means."

He shrugged. "True. But beating someone's skull into a bloody pulp is…" Yusuke popped his shoulders upward again, struggling to find the word he wanted. "Grisly, I guess."

"Agree to disagree."

He couldn't. He _didn't_ agree, not even close, and he couldn't just sit there and pretend that wasn't a gruesome as all get out way to kill someone. But before he could argue that point, Hibana beat him to the punch.

"You take comfort in the distance," she said. "Whatever your energy is capable of, it must let you kill from range, huh? But that's not different. If you kill someone, they're still dead, whether you use your hands or a club or an energy blast. None of that makes a difference. Dead is dead."

Yusuke's jaw clicked shut on a retort. She was wrong. She _had_ to be wrong. But he didn't know how to make her see that—or maybe there just _wasn't_ a way to make her see it—so he shook his head, then thrust his hand at the rest of her piled up crap, eager to get the rest of this over with. "Get on with the explanations, would ya?"

The next mound of supplies didn't really require a description. Food. Tins and cartons and vacuum sealed packets. None of it looked appealing, but as Hibana snagged up a bag of jerky and tossed it his way, Yusuke's stomach rumbled and he realized how many hours it had been since he'd eaten. He'd gone without food not just since entering the Grounds, but since breakfast, well over twelve hours ago.

That might as well have been a lifetime.

Officially starving, he yanked open the bag's seal and shoved the first strip of jerky into his mouth, gnawing through the leather like it was the finest meal he'd ever been served.

Hibana huffed one of her wind-like laughs. "Eat your fill. It's not worth carrying all of this—" a sweep of her hand encompassed the rest of the food "—when it's so easy to find more. But scrounging up food won't be a priority either. If we get pinned down, we're not breaking cover to fill your stomach."

"Got it," he said around a mouthful of too salty beef. "Stuff my face. That I can do."

Shaking her head, Hibana turned her attention to the next pile. It was the smallest by far, nothing but a few measly rolls of bandages and two of those patches she'd stuck on him after the bomb nearly melted his skin off his bones. All of it had been part of her haul, but that hadn't stopped her from adding it to their joint pile anyway.

"The Grounds don't provide a lot of medical supplies," she said. "Just these. Med kits, like the one I used on you, and bandages, which will patch up minor injuries, but won't save your life." She picked up one of the rolls, dragging her thumb down the white cloth. "Like the patches, it's a pretty instant heal, but on a much smaller, more generalized scale. These don't even heal any direct injury. Just your body as a whole. And both take time. Ten seconds for a med kit to kick in. Five for a bandage."

"Better than nothing."

"Barely." She shoved the lot his way. "Carry them on you. Without a proper means of defense, you're going to need them more than me."

Yusuke glared at her. "Just because I don't have my powers doesn't mean I'm going to be useless."

"I didn't say you would."

"Implied. Said. What's the difference?"

Eyes narrowed, she slung one of the empty backpacks his way. "Carry them. But—and I can't stress this enough, Urameshi—don't count on them to save your life. They did it once. Consider that your freebie. Don't expect it to happen again."

Chewing through the last bite of his first jerky strip, he stuffed the bandages into the bottom of his bag, then slid the first aid patches into the front pocket. "Aye, aye, boss," he muttered, the words coming out garbled before he cleared his throat and added, "I get it, though. These will save me after a fight, but I'll get damn lucky if they work during one, yeah?"

"Exactly."

He tapped a hand against his temple. "Noted or roger or whatever nonsense military term you're used to hearing."

Hibana cocked her head a degree to the left, her hair spilling over her shoulder in a black wave. "What's that supposed to mean?"

" _I've had tactical training, Urameshi,"_ Yusuke said, managing to mimic her higher pitch but failing to capture her usual musical flow. If she was a chiming bell, he was a clanging, crashing, clattering gong. Not that it mattered. The prickling irritation clouding her eyes proved he'd gotten his point across. "I've met and fought and gotten way too chummy with the biggest baddies Demon World has to offer, and even though the whole damn lot of them have been fighting since they tottered their first murderous steps, not a single one has ever used the words 'tactical training.' So don't try to pretend you're just some fighter who got lucky with her spawn point here in Hell. You're a soldier. I don't know who you served, but I'm not an idiot—at least, not all the time. I notice shit every once and a while."

Her answer came slowly, a dozen hooded emotions tracking across the dark canvas of her eyes. Muscles worked in her jaw, as if she were turning over possible replies, testing them on her tongue before deciding which one to cough up. "So what if I am?" she said at last, caustic and biting, her tone needling him like barbed wire.

Defensive?

Not the response he'd excepted.

In that case, color him really freaking curious.

Feigning casual disinterest, he leaned into the wall, propping his back against a support beam. "I didn't say I cared, Hibana. Just figured we should get it out there so you can stop being so weird. Be you. Lean into the military mumbo jumbo. Whatever. Get me out of here alive, and I won't really give a shit who you were before this."

She eyed him over a moment longer, reminding him way too much of Genkai for his liking, but then she tossed her head and thrust a hand toward the final stack of supplies.

"These are our mods."

"Huh?"

"Think of us as characters in a video game. If you open up console commands, you can mod us. Augment us. Makes us better. Dog tags do that permanently—or for as long as you wear it, I should say. But these are temporary." Hibana pitched him a bottle of pills followed by a dinged up can painted in electric green. "They're boosts. The pills grant strength, the energy drinks speed."

"Strength? In what sense?"

Her sinful grin flashed between the shadows, dim moonlight catching on her teeth. "Every contestant in the Grounds is given the same baseline speed and strength upon spawning in the game. To even the playing field—or some bullshit like that. But these—" she swept her hands out to encompass the boosts ''—change that. They don't return your powers like a tag does, but they elevate your strength and speed. Again, it's to a set, shared value, but it's significantly higher than the baseline, and it's a huge advantage over an unboosted opponent."

Increased strength. Heightened speed.

Now that was the kind of tool Yusuke wanted. Not some dumb knife.

Curious, he rattled the bottle next to his ear, and dozens of pills clinked inside it. Hibana had lined up another five canisters beside four energy drinks, which made for six and five of each, but between all those pill bottles, there had to be hundreds of tablets.

So what was the trick? Where was the catch?

The Grounds didn't seem like a place that handed out advantages willy nilly.

Leaning forward, he gave the bottle a rough shake. "Then why haven't I been popping these like candy since the second we got them?"

Unimpressed, Hibana shook some meds back at him. "They're one use only," she said, then pried off her bottle's cap and poured a pill into her hand. The capsule landed in the center of her palm, tiny and white and stupidly boring, but Yusuke forgot all about that as soon as she tipped the bottle over and nothing else fell out. "One bottle, one pill. The sound and weight and feel are all just for show. A trick of the Grounds, and nothing more."

Fed up, Yusuke lobbed the pills into his backpack. "I hate this place."

"Yeah, well, get in line, because you're certainly not alone, and you definitely weren't here first."

He crossed his arms over his chest, huffing a sigh. All these rules made his skin crawl, all these tricks and hidden catches meant to worsen the odds of survival. Game mechanics suddenly dictated his fate—and he _despised_ games that set him on a strict path and bullied him down it no matter how hard he fought to upend the storyline.

Boiled down to its core, once he got past the strange landscape and ticking counter in the corner of his vision, that's all the Unknown Grounds were. In a nutshell, this was just a game—just like Hibana said. A game that wanted to kill him. But still only a game. Complete with rules and limitations out the wazoo—all meant to pit fighters against each other in a desperate scramble for survival, setting them up for a bloodbath only one squad could walk away from.

Too bad for the Grounds that he didn't plan on rolling over and playing along.

That wasn't Urameshi Yusuke's style, damn it.

But to break the rules, first he had to understand them. Even if listening like a proper schoolboy made him want to tear his hair out.

That stubborn thought in mind, he sat up straighter and scanned the supplies scattered before Hibana. They weren't much, but they were enough to get started—enough to help him reach the next phase. "What else do I need to know? Where do we go from here?"

"First, securing dog tags for you. If you're going to find your team, you'll need to be armed." Lifting her butt off the floor, she reached into her back pocket and tugged out a folded-up piece of paper—except it wasn't white printer paper or anything nearly so normal. It was more like parchment, tan and weathered and cracking at the edges. She unfolded it, then offered it to Yusuke, and as he held it up, she scooted closer so she could see its surface, too.

A map had been drawn across the paper. Detailed. _Too_ detailed, really. Like a military schematic, meant for deploying armies or something. Its stark lines depicted two islands, a much larger one to the north and a smaller one to the south. Yellow markings dotted the surface, small rectangles that he had to guess stood for buildings. But there was too much for him to readily take in, too many strange, foreign names and no way to place himself among them.

That question, at least, Hibana seemed set on resolving.

Head bent over the map, she pressed a finger to the northeastern shore. "We're here, roughly, but like I said, we're most likely to find you a tag on the southern island, in these military outposts." Her finger roved down, to the smaller island, and she tapped a series of tightly packed rectangles. "We need to head there. On the way, we'll keep an eye out for supply drops. They're these flybys that happen every few hours. A big crate will fall from a passing drone. They're impossible to miss, and if you can win the fight for one, you've got yourself the best loot in the Grounds."

"Like what?"

"Med kits. The strongest powers. Adrenaline shots."

Yusuke propped his elbows atop his knees, hands dangling down between his shins, and—because he was clearly meant to—said, "Get it over with. Wow me with whatever bullshit adrenaline shots do."

Hibana chuckled lowly. "They return a person's energy. Completely. For a five-minute duration. Strength, speed, energy reserves. All of it comes back. Not any of the preset baselines. Just _your_ powers, your capabilities. They're rare. We'll probably never find one, but if we do… Well, it can change the entire nature of the game."

"How is that better than a dog tag? Wouldn't I just want to find my own tag and be done with it?"

She shook her head. "The tags don't completely return you to normal. They only grant a portion of your usual physical capabilities and, more importantly, only one facet of your energy." Absently, she reached for the chains around her neck, running her thumb down the engraved faces of each nameplate. "Basically, the tags are a one trick pony, but an adrenaline shot is the whole damn rodeo."

Yusuke chewed on his lip, turning the bottle of pills over and over in his hands, getting lost in the almost hypnotic rhythm of the fake capsules tumbling inside it. "When you say 'one trick pony,' what's that mean exactly?"

With a tired laugh, she flicked her wrist, and one of her sphere clusters appeared in her hand. "This is an X-KAIROS. It's meant for breaching walls or barriers, specifically. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't use it as a direct attack on an opponent. It's just not designed for that. But it _is_ my signature move—and apparently that's all it takes for the Grounds to choose it as the ability to link to my dog tag."

"So getting your tag only returned that—" he dipped his chin toward the rotating spheres of crimson energy "—and not the rest of what you can do."

"Right." The X-KAIROS faded away, and Hibana tugged on her map, pulling it from his fingers and staring down at its canvas surface unseeingly. "I'd need an adrenaline shot if I wanted the whole shebang."

Which meant Yusuke's tag, if he could find it, would return his Spirit Gun, but not his Shotgun or any of the other energy-infused attacks he'd integrated into his arsenal over the years. Fair enough. He didn't really need the rest. His Spirit Gun had saved his life more times than he could count. He had faith it would do so a thousand times more.

But he did still need an adrenaline shot.

Well, an adrenaline shot _and_ Kuwabara.

Because getting his Spirit Gun back would be great, yeah. But it wouldn't get him out of here. It wouldn't save him or the guys.

Kuwabara's Dimension Sword, though?

That thing could cut them out of the Grounds in two seconds flat.

"Then we've got to find one of those," he said. "An adrenaline shot, I mean. Nabbing one is officially priority number one."

The map rustled as Hibana's grip tightened, her fingertips creasing the parchment. "There's no guarantee we'll ever find a shot. You can't game plan around them. It's not a viable strategy—"

"I need one."

"Urameshi—"

He interrupted her again. "No, Hibana. I'm not kidding around here. We need to get a shot, and we need to find my team, and then we're getting the fuck out of here."

Her eyes narrowed. "How?"

"Just trust me."

"I'm not in the business of blind trust."

"Oh, really? Well, me neither. But that's what you keep demanding from me." Yusuke leveled her with his sharpest glare, refusing to back down so much as an inch even as she shifted, her foot kicking against his as she sat up straighter. "And I've delivered, Hibana. I've trusted you. So return the fucking favor and be done with it."

Anger carved every muscle in her body into stone, but she jerked her head in a combative nod. "Fine. But it doesn't change our plan. We need to head for the military base. If drops fall near us, we'll stop for them, but we're not wasting our time chasing crates across the island."

"Sure. Whatever." He caught her wrist in his hand, his fingers snaking around its narrow width, tensing around the fragile bones. It wasn't a threat. Not really. But if he had to guess, she'd probably perceive it as one—and he was a-okay with that. " _Every_ drop we see, though. No matter how hairy."

"Roger," she said, spitting the agreement like glass.

He grinned and tossed her hand away. "Now, what else? Any more bullshit rules I need to know before I'm ready to kick some idiot ass?"

Frustration still simmered in her every movement as she snagged his wrist the same way he had just grabbed hers, then flipped it over, baring the underside for both of them to see. His eyes widened at what he discovered there.

Stained across his pale, scarred skin in black ink waited a number.

 _ **097**_

"Is this some kind of messed up brand?" he asked after a beat, squinting at the perfectly traced digits. They were crisp and clean, as if they'd been printed onto his skin with the most exactingly detailed laser imaginable.

"Pretty much." She lifted her own wrist and pulled back the edges of her glove, revealing a matching tattoo of her own.

 _ **006**_

"Like your tag," he said, gaze flicking to the dog tags dangling at her throat.

She nodded. "Every player has a number. It's how you'll know if you've found your own tag."

"How you'd end up with such a fancy, low one?"

"Bad luck."

He rolled his eyes. "Uh huh. Sure. Except, I think we all have some pretty smashingly bad luck since we ended up here, so… what's the real reason?"

"I don't know." She leaned back against the wall, letting her head rest on the rotting wood. "My best guess? That numbers are assigned as players enter the Grounds. I must've loaded in sixth. You came in ninety-seventh."

"Then my team is probably a bunch of high numbers, too, right? I mean, I'm not sure I was captured first, but still. Makes the most sense, doesn't it?"

"Does it matter either way?"

He hesitated, then shrugged. "Guess not. Seems like it should though."

Silence fell, stretching between them, tight with tension.

In the corner of his vision, the _Alive_ counter dropped to _88_.

A ragged sigh caught in Yusuke's throat, but he stubbornly swallowed it down. He refused to pity himself, refused to whine and complain and just _accept_ this as his fate. He had a plan—find Kuwabara, find an adrenaline shot, then get out. If he stuck to those steps, he'd be okay.

He _would_ —damn it.

Still, one more question wouldn't hurt. "Do you know how long these matches usually last? How many days does it take until everyone's dead?"

"A week, maybe. Never more than fourteen days." He didn't even need to ask before she clarified, spreading her map flat against her knees. "Right now, both islands are completely available, free for us to explore however we please. But at midnight tomorrow, that changes. Two circles will appear on this map. One white, one blue. The blue one will be larger, probably encompass the majority of the Grounds. The white one will lie somewhere inside the blue. Twelve hours after that, at noon on the dot, the blue circle— _the_ Circle—will start closing, moving in until it reaches the white. Then a new set of circles will appear. The blue where the white once was, and a new white one somewhere within that."

She looked up at him, her eyes hard as obsidian. "The Circle is a barrier wall. Once it manifests in the Grounds, you can still pass beyond it, but doing so—going outside the bounds of the fight—will hurt you. Kill you, even, if you stay out too long."

A curse wedged itself against Yusuke's teeth, but he shoved it aside. "So they—the Gamerunner, or whatever—shrink the battlefield. To force us together?"

"Yup. Over and over again. Until there's nothing left at all."

"And that's why two weeks is the max? That's when it closes down to nothing?"

She nodded again, then folded up the map and returned it to her back pocket. "The military base on the small island may not stay inbounds for long. That's why we need to get there fast. Before we lose access entirely."

"But we won't know that until the circles appear tomorrow night?"

"Right."

"Well, shit."

She barked a hollow laugh. "The outposts should stay in. At least through the first Circle. But the longer we take to get there, the more drops we waste time collecting, the worse our chances are of making it south in time."

"Doesn't matter." He shot her a sideways look, trying to figure out if the flat press of her lips showed determination or annoyance. Not that it changed anything either way. He wasn't backing down on this. "We're going after those drops."

Shaking her head, she busied herself dragging over her pack and storing away everything she'd deemed valuable, but he hadn't missed the wry crook at the corner of her lips as she bent over her work, and it was still there ten minutes later, as she scooted down onto the damp floorboards, pulled her hood up, and tucked her pack under her head. "You take first watch. Wake me in a few hours—or when you just can't stay up anymore. Then I'll take a shift before we head out."

She didn't wait for an answer, just tugged her hood more firmly down over her eyes before folding her hands atop her stomach and going still. In what felt like seconds, her breath had evened out, and without even a moment's fuss about their disgusting home for the night, she was out cold.

And that left Yusuke alone—with nothing but a rusty dagger, a shitty plan, and memories of a very different girl to get him through the night.

* * *

AN: With that, the vast majority of the Unknown Grounds's rules are laid out. I hope it didn't feel too much like an info dump. I just wanted to get as much of the game's rules onto the table so we can move on to the action (which will start in earnest next chapter, which'll be titled 'First Blood, Drawn', hehehe).

I really enjoy writing Hibana and Yusuke bantering, not to mention Yusuke in general. I can't believe it's taken me this many years to get around to dabbling in a story focused so thoroughly on him. That said, other boys will make appearances in most chapters. There won't be many that are Yusuke-only like this one.

Ginormous thanks to all the lovelies who reviewed last chapter! Y'all rock, and I'd be remiss to say this would be as much fun without you all joining me for the ride. Thank you to: DeathAngel457, Laina Inverse, MissIdeophobia, backoff22, roseeyes, WistfulSin, Shell1331, and Star Charter!


	6. First Blood, Drawn

_**Chapter 6: First Blood, Drawn**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **88**_ Alive

Kurama endured his first night in the battleground on a heavily wooded ridge tucked just below the peak of the hill where he'd regained consciousness. He hid himself among thick brambles, hoping—perhaps foolishly—that the gnarled branches of the shrubs might insulate him against the chill gathering in the air.

No such luck found him.

Fortunately, there was no one to witness his shivers or to hear his teeth chatter, and so he whiled away the hours, waiting on sleep that never came. Had he been his usual self, he wouldn't have bothered camping anywhere for the night, let alone this miserable hill, but without the typical acuity of his senses, attempting to hike the wilderness in the pitch dark would've been begging misfortune to find him—and the last thing he needed if he was to survive this place was a broken leg.

Hence the night in the bushes.

In the morning, as the first gray light of dawn seeped over the eastern horizon, he abandoned his cover and carried on north, farther up the hillock. Same as the day before, he was after a high vantage point, some means of appraising the terrain at a greater distance, and even the burning in his thighs as he crested the summit wasn't enough to deter him.

Without elevation, he'd never find Yusuke, Hiei, or Kuwabara. The advantage of height was worth innumerable ailments—and the bruised ego they brought with them.

At the top of the hill, the landscape was desolate, mostly devoid of trees, marked only with the jutting, stony skeletons of collapsed ruins off to the northeast. One eye on the distant relics, Kurama kept a low profile and beat a path along the ridge until he reached a rocky outcropping, then hunkered into a crevice, confident in the notion he couldn't be spotted by an enemy he couldn't see in turn. Ears straining for the faintest signal of movement, he turned to study the battlefield laid out before him.

The blackened, pocked terrain where the bombs had landed provided a reference point, and a sprawling pond lay not much farther south than the devastation. From the spot where Kurama had woken up the day before, the water had been obscured by the gentle sloping of the bombed field, but now he could see the ribbon of a river unwinding to the southwest, creeping like a silver snake undulating across the land.

The darkened shells of abandoned buildings clustered east of the water, and though they formed little more than a settlement, as far as this place was concerned they passed for a city. Still, he spotted no movement in the narrow streets, which meant even that poor sketch of a town was unoccupied.

But overnight, the counter on his vision had ticked to _88_ and then to _87_.

So people were here. Somewhere. He just hadn't found them yet.

Farther east, vast waters waited. An ocean. Or a sea. Or a lake so massive it might as well be open water. West, beyond the pond, more rolling hills and scattered birch forests spread to the distant horizon. Same to the south.

Which left only the north and what, if anything, lay beyond the ridge.

Tamping down the simmering rage boiling beneath his skin, Kurama allowed himself another moment's rest, breathing deeply, hands laced behind his head as he studied the scraggy fields far below. While his body recuperated, he catalogued his other needs.

Water. Food. Weapons.

His teammates.

Water he could take care of easily enough. It had to be a priority sooner rather than later, but even if he couldn't turn up any proper source, there was that pond across the field. It was an option, if things got bleak, and that was enough for now—even if he'd rather not trek across such open land without some means of defense.

Food was more pressing.

He was twenty-four hours out from his last meal, and though he was far from starvation, being low on calories—and the energy stores they brought with them—would leave him horribly unprepared for combat. Furthermore, he had no idea how readily available food might be. Would he be reduced to scavenging from the local plant life? Or were real foodstuffs hidden somewhere nearby?

And then there was the need for a weapon. He'd take anything, no matter how barbaric.

With his breath returned, Kurama left his defensive huddle against the rocks and headed deeper onto the plateau—straight for the rubble and ruins he'd spotted just to his northeast. He kept his pace steady, his senses on high alert. On the lookout. Ready for—

There.

Movement amongst the crumbled foundations of a dilapidated hovel.

Kurama didn't waste so much as a second. Not here. Not now. This wasn't a tournament battle. He had no energy to defend himself. None of his usual tricks waited up his sleeves.

So there'd be no baiting his enemy. There'd be no careful deconstruction of their strategies, their strengths and weaknesses. There was only time for one choice—their life or his?

And truly, that wasn't a choice at all.

Bursting into a sprint, he swooped low, scooping a piece of jutting rebar from the debris. It sat heavy and awkward in his hand, but its edges were sharp, shorn steel gleaming beneath the rising sun's light, and as he vaulted the lip of the rubble providing his enemy's cover, he stabbed that whetted end forward like a rapier.

The length of metal cut home.

In answer, the man hunched against the stones did little more than groan.

Pale and waxen, all lean muscle and long limbs, the man made no move to defend himself. Instead, he merely gasped, hands falling away from his side, revealing a ragged wound gouged—or was it burned?—across his ribcage, and as Kurama's rebar embedded itself in the man's throat, snuffing his life out instantly, Kurama recognized his victim had already been a dead man. His life would've bled out into the wreckage with or without Kurama's intervention.

Which could've made this a mercy killing.

But it wasn't. Kurama hadn't meant it that way, and he wouldn't pretend he had now.

Not even as the counters on his vision changed.

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **86**_ Alive

So be it.

If this was a fight to the death, Kurama would fight. He would kill. This man's blood wasn't the first to stain Kurama's hands, and he had no intention of it being the last, either. As long as Hiei and the others were somewhere out there, he wouldn't accept defeat here. Besides, Mother was waiting for him at home, and no twisted death games would stop him from returning to her.

Therefore, this man had to die.

Simple—and gruesome—as that.

Gritting his teeth, Kurama tossed aside the bloodied rebar and picked over the cooling corpse. The man had a backpack, though its contents were meager. An empty canteen. Three rolls of bandages. And at the very bottom—as valuable as the rarest Demon World fortune—a package of dried fruit.

Carefully shuttering his mind against the depraved ramifications of his next actions, Kurama stripped the corpse of its clothes. Canvas trousers. A long, black coat. Sturdy boots. Whoever had attacked this man first had scorched the jacket when they'd ravaged his ribs, but even burned, bloody, and ragged, the coat was far superior to the flimsy coveralls Kurama had woken up in.

It did raise the question, though: how had this man been assaulted? What sort of weapon would cause these burns?

He wasted no time dawdling over what he could not yet understand, and in no more than three minutes, Kurama had dressed in his new garb, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and secured the bag of fruit in his back pocket. Then he shifted his attention to the rest of the ruins.

This man's first attacker couldn't be far. His injury had been bleeding too profusely to be old. If left amongst the rubble much longer, the man would've died before Kurama arrived—and in that case, Kurama needed to stay on alert, ready for an attack. Nevertheless, he had to scavenge, too. Clearly, there were supplies to be found, if only he were able to discover them.

Abandoning the corpse, he picked his way through the ruins with utmost care, heading east. There was shore that way, somewhere beyond the hill's summit. Keeping it close at hand would help him work out the parameters of this place, and understanding his surroundings was the first step in planning his escape.

But in the end, he hadn't progressed far before another blur of motion caught his eye.

This time, his enemy didn't allow him to make the first move.

She leapt from cover, one arm firing forward, slinging a bottle to his feet, a rag hanging from its mouth. He had only a split second to process her poor aim before the glass shattered and liquid splattered across his legs. A breath later, he realized the rag had been smoldering, and with a roar, the oil coating his pants went up in flame.

A Molotov cocktail.

Kurama dropped, rolling out of the worst of the fire, and coming to his knees as the woman barreled toward him, one hand raised, a dagger ready. He threw himself sideways again, and as she careened past him, her momentum proving too much for her to rein in, he grabbed a rock from amongst the deteriorated foundations and leapt after her. He drove his fist forward, aiming for her nose, hoping to punch the cartilage up and into her brain.

She reacted too quickly, jerking aside. The stone caught her across her cheekbone as she whirled to face him, and its blunt edge glanced off her nose instead of shattering it as he'd intended. Even still, Kurama felt as much as heard the sickening crunch of cartilage as the rocks' brutal edge cracked into her nose's bridge.

She screamed, and her dagger swiped at him, but even without his demonic agility, avoiding her desperate assault proved easy. Faster than she could retaliate, he danced backward, leaving her blade to claw uselessly at the space between them.

Or so he'd envisioned.

As he backpedaled, Kurama's usual sure-footedness failed him. One second he was upright, bobbing out of reach, the next his heel caught on an upturned stone, and he toppled, the base of his skull slamming into unforgiving rock. _Hard_. Hard enough that his vision spun, black searing at the edges of his sight. Concussions weren't an injury he'd ever concerned himself with before, but as the world grew tremulous, it dawned on him anew that without his energy, his body was as susceptible to pathetic human injury as any other.

Still, he wouldn't be bested.

Not like this. Not by his own two feet.

Kurama heaved upright, pain pounding at the back of his skull nearly sending him back to his knees, and managed to locate the woman a moment before her hand drove into his gut. Flaming heat seared his ribs. Her knife drove between his ribs, yanking what might've been a scream from his throat, though he couldn't be sure.

He heard nothing beyond the raging of his own heart—that and the voice of Mother, echoing in his ears.

And again, he was sure: there'd be no besting him. Not on these terms. Not while he still had the stone he'd first struck with.

With that thought bolstering him, even as his body shrieked in agony beneath her touch, he slammed the makeshift bludgeon against her temple. Once. Twice. Thrice.

She went limp.

The energy around her knuckles dissipated.

His arm did not stop.

After the fifth hit, her body slumped against his, her weight dragging them both to their knees. Yet still he struck. Again and again and again. An endless barrage. Until she was unrecognizable. Until the counters on his vision changed again.

 _ **2**_ Kills

 _ **85**_ Alive

It took too long for him to shove her away, too long for him to regain his feet, too long for him to splay her body in the sunlight and pick her clean of supplies, blood sluicing down his stomach all the while. He gathered his loot like meager treasure, clutching it in his arms. A switchblade from her jacket pocket. A full canteen from her pack. The gleaming dog tag from her throat that began to flash after she died.

Then he lurched away from her bloodied remains.

He was exposed—far, far too exposed—here. And thanks to the seeping, bloody wound across his abdomen and the scorched, screaming flesh of his calves, he was in no position to win another clash. He needed to locate cover. More than that, he needed to apply the bandages he'd picked off his first victim, before he became just as much a dead man walking as that initial kill had been.

But as Kurama turned to go, stumbling through the ruins, he saw it. Fluttering in the breeze. Tied around a metal stake protruding from the earth. Bright as the blood coating Kurama's fingers.

A red string.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **85**_ Alive

"So these friends of yours," Hibana said, her words almost sucked away on a gust off the water as they trekked down the wind-battered beach. "Do they have names?"

Suppressing a shiver brought on by the cold, Yusuke hummed confirmation through chattering teeth. "Sure do. Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei."

"What're they like?"

His brows rising, Yusuke glanced sideways at Hibana. To her right, a rocky ridge formed the edge of the beach, providing them cover from prying eyes further inland. The sand had begun petering out beneath their feet, giving way to craggy shale, but for now, Hibana had decided the thinning beach was safer than the exposed fields to the west, and she seemed set on their current course for as long as it would harbor them.

Yusuke's long-sleeved shirt had proven about as effective at keeping him warm as just strutting around naked would have, and he rubbed at his arms in frustration as he muttered, "How the heck am I supposed to answer that? Three people can't be boiled down to a few stupid sentences."

"Maybe not," Hibana said, "but I suggest you try."

"Why? Because you're bored—"

"No, Urameshi." She jabbed a finger toward the sky, but didn't so much as look up. "Because we're being watched—because we're _always_ being watched in the Grounds—and trust me, it'll serve you well to lay out why reaching your friends means something to you."

Yusuke barely heard her.

He was already gawking skyward, trying to spot whatever it was she claimed was watching them. Nothing turned up. Just slate gray expanse, stretching in all directions. A few wisps of clouds. Watery sunlight bleeding across the horizon and lancing off the ocean's tumbling waves.

Then Hibana's shoulder bumped his, and she guided her pointed finger more squarely into his line of sight, indicating a speck far overhead. Gray. Almost lost against the sky. But a little bit silver, too. With a blinking red eye at its center.

"What the fuck is that?"

"It's called Yokai."

His eyes narrowed. "That's not an answer, Hibana. Eff off with the cryptic bullshit, would you? At what point are you going to stop keeping stuff from me? Put it all out there and be done with it—before I lose my mind."

Apparently yelling was not the way to prying answers out of her stubborn jaws.

She shot him a sneer, her nose crinkling in a way that reminded Yusuke of Keiko, of the way she used to look in the moments right before she slapped him. Only, on Hibana, those crinkles didn't make Yusuke want to kiss her until the anger went away.

Mostly, they just made him want to bolt.

"I'm keeping you alive, aren't I? Fifteen people have died, and you're not one of them. Can't you be thankful for that?" She grabbed Yusuke's arm, jerking him to a halt, then stepped straight into his personal space, standing chest-to-chest and glaring at him, so tall she almost didn't need to tilt her head back at all.

That wasn't Keiko-like, either.

"I'm sorry I didn't sit you down for a fucking lecture the moment I saved your ass," Hibana hissed, her tone dropping to a cold purr Yusuke recognized from Hiei—the same one that asshole liked to adopt right before roasting his enemies down to ash. Proud. Unwavering. And totally without patience. "Sorry the Grounds didn't allow for a study session. Life's just such a bitch sometimes, huh?"

A minute ago, he could've sworn they'd almost been getting along. When they'd woken that morning, Hibana had been brisk, but not harsh, hurrying him awake and helping pack up their gear, then tearing into a ration pack as she led him down the beach. They'd talked—just a bit, stupid nonsense about the chill, in which she'd confirmed the Grounds were modeled off Russia.

It wasn't like running a mission with the guys.

But Hibana hadn't been openly hostile like she was now.

"Back off me," Yusuke snapped, his temper getting the better of him. With a shove of his own, he pushed back at her, wedging her onto her heels—out of his face. "Your secrets are getting old. I don't care how inconvenient telling me the truth is—you still have to do it."

"I don't have to do anything, Urameshi. I could walk away right now. Leave you to head for the military base on your own. _You_ can find a dog tag." She jabbed a finger into his chest. " _You_ can get your own adrenaline shot." Another jab. " _You_ can search for your teammates—"

He grabbed her before she could land another strike. Fury snapping in his blood like striking lightning, he bent her finger backward at the joint. "Enough," he barked, spitting the word like a bullet. "We're better off together. I know it. You know it. Your empty threats don't change that. So stop making them and tell me what _that_ is." He shoved his hand upward, forcing her finger to point back toward the gray speck in the sky. "Then let's be done with this."

For a moment, fire raged in her dark eyes, molten and scorching and as deadly as any calculating intensity Yusuke had ever witnessed in Kurama, but then the snarl smoothed from Hibana's lips, the creases around her eyes went flat—and if he were the idiot she probably thought he was, he might've believed she wasn't ticked at him anymore.

But Yusuke wasn't an idiot.

And she definitely remained pissed off.

"I call it Yokai. It observes the Grounds. It and others like it." Hibana disentangled from him, though he couldn't be sure who had even been holding who anymore. "There are dozens, all flying above the battlegrounds, tracking contestants."

"Why?"

"To send a video feed back to the Gamerunner. Audio, too. Every second of every hour you spend in the Grounds is recorded and sent back to him."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I got that part. But why? Why does this jackass need to see…" He trailed off, gnawing on his lip, then sputtered back to a start. "It's not because he _needs_ to see us, is it? It's because he _wants_ to."

"That's a bingo," Hibana drawled. Turning her back on him, she resumed their trek down the beach, and he fell into step at her side, trusting his weakened instincts to keep him upright as he glared up at the distant red light, glinting like an eye.

He still had more questions—endless fucking questions—and he ground his teeth together, annoyed, on top of everything else, at how many he'd spent the last day asking. For all Genkai's claims, he wasn't actually a dumbass. Not usually, anyway. But now he was a freaking know-nothing idiot at every turn. "Why didn't I notice it before?"

"Because you weren't looking."

An insult rose on his tongue, but it died just as quickly, sparking out like a flashfire doused before it even caught flame.

She wasn't exactly _wrong_.

But being right didn't mean she wasn't a bitch.

"So what is it exactly? Some kind of robot? A drone or something?"

"Yes and no."

"How the hell was that a yes or no question?"

The last of the beach's sand petered out, giving way to rocks jutting up to join the higher ground to their right, and Hibana scrambled up it with dogged agility. "Yokai is a drone, but it's not like any drone you've ever heard of. It doesn't run on electricity."

"Then what does it run on?"

Hibana's answer came in a roundabout fashion. "You know about spirit energy and demon energy, maybe you've even heard of sacred energy or life energy, but there are other varieties. Kinds that aren't nearly so natural. Kinds that weren't meant to be touched." Pausing, crouched on the rocks, she looked down at him, barely visible beneath the shadow of her hood. "Kinds that shouldn't have been created."

A rock—nah, a _boulder_ settled in Yusuke's gut at the creepy foreboding in her tone. "What kinds are we talking?"

"In Yokai's case?" Her gaze swung up, roving out across the ocean's lapping waves, growing distant before she squeezed her eyes shut entirely, and when she at last answered her own question, Yusuke suspected she'd forgotten about him entirely. "I think the best name it was ever given was one that makes no sense at all."

Yusuke barely dared speak. "Well, what was it, then?"

Her eyes snapped open, irises black as oblivion.

"Inert energy."

* * *

AN: What's inert energy exactly? Well, it's not canon, so I certainly don't expect anyone to answer that. But it is going to play a pivotal role in this story. More to come on that in future chapters!

I have to say, when I first thought of this fic, I envisioned Hiei as the one who'd fall right into step with the Grounds' most basic premise—kill enemies before they kill you. And I'm not saying that won't end up being the case, but I did think it'd be a missed opportunity not to put the other boys (or, at least, one of them) through the crucible first. We all know Hiei doesn't have many qualms about killing, but I think people often forget that Kurama doesn't really either. For all his handsome, well-mannered exterior, Kurama is still one of Demon World's most notorious criminals, and he's hardly going to roll over and accept death. He'd fight tooth and nail to survive, regardless of which innocents might stand in his way. Hence the start of this chapter and Kurama becoming the first of the boys to notch a kill.

This fic possesses a weird ability to get psychological regarding the boys and what it means to be fighters in the vein that they are. I really want to dig deep and explore those possibilities!

Anyway, enough prattling from me! A big heaping of thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter: MissIdeophobia, WistfulSin, roseeyes, Laina Inverse, Aly Goode, Star Charter, and Shell1331. I'm hoping to get some review responses out to all you wonderful folks this weekend!

Happy holidays to everyone!


	7. Narrative Spin

_**Chapter 7: Narrative Spin**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **83**_ Alive

For hours, Hiei had traveled due west from the bombs, keeping the setting sun always directly in front of him, but come nightfall, he'd broken a few degrees north, remaining on the eastern edge of a road that cut through the wilderness. He'd granted the cracked pavement a wide berth, unwilling to trust any sign of civilization when he couldn't predict what sort of traffic it might carry, and hunkered that first night in a narrow copse of birch trees east of the concrete. But sleep proved to be a beast too wily for him to wrangle, and he caught no more than a few minutes rest in the long hours between sundown and sunup while he sat in a thicket of bushes, the rusted machete he'd claimed for his own hanging loose from one hand. Still, even exhaustion wouldn't be his undoing, and as soon as enough light returned to the world to guide his feet, he abandoned his hideout and followed the road north.

His pace the day before had been slow. Slower than he would've liked. Without his energy, he was but a shell of himself, little better than a fragile reincarnation of what Jaganshi Hiei was meant to be. A cold, icy rage grew in his bones with each passing moment of weakness, the bitter chill of his ice maiden ancestors' infamous pride branding itself across his soul.

Today, he would be faster.

He would push this husk of a body to its fullest. It would _not_ slow him down.

The road delivered him to a town, a few hundred buildings laid out in a crumbling grid. Many were tall, three stories at least, but Hiei spotted no life behind their windows, no silhouettes in the streets. Nevertheless, he whiled away nearly four hours in the town's outskirts, studying the deserted buildings, waiting for a sign of the trap he suspected waited on those blocks. Yet even as the sun reached its highest point, nothing moved inside the town's limits.

In the end, it was his stomach that drove him out of hiding.

Its rumbles pushed him inward, not via the roads that would leave him too exposed, but through the scrub brush that crept all the way to the edges of the closest buildings. Light-footed as a shadow, he snuck to an open window, vaulted inside, and landed with only the faintest whisper of sound.

Then he began to loot.

An hour later, Hiei had ransacked two separate three-stories, moving between them by leaping from one flat roof to the next. He worked quick, bursting through apartment doors, the knobs gone stiff with rust, and rummaging through kitchen cabinets, scarfing down anything edible he uncovered. All the while, he listened for other footsteps, for other breathing, for any sign of life that wasn't his own.

Nothing manifested.

He left through the same window by which he'd entered, a pack heavy on his back, his machete still in hand. Its length of steel had become as much a part of his arm as his katana usually was, just one further extension of his body.

With it in hand, his fingers itched and twitched, aching to find their first victim, to prove to this wretched place that he was Jaganshi Hiei, with or without his demon energy, and there wasn't a damn soul in the world who could wear him down.

But that time wasn't here. Not yet. All he could do now was keep moving, keep heading west, keep hoping—even if he'd never admit it aloud—to stumble upon Kurama or Yusuke or even Kuwabara.

As Hiei left the town behind, he turned back only once, frowning at the skeletal buildings and their empty innards. Then he carried on, marching toward the distant horizon once more, the sun overhead, following the same westward path as he was. He paid little mind to the signs he passed, with their strange, illegible characters, cataloguing them away with only the most cursory of glances.

The last one he saw before a thicket of trees enveloped the town entirely bore letter in sharp, cutting lines.

 _Severny_.

Whatever that meant.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **83**_ Alive

Every few hours, whenever he needed to scrounge up water or take a leak or just rest his aching legs, Kuwabara stopped and cut loose another strip of red cloth with the hungry teeth of his serrated knife, then left them littered across the fields and hills he hiked through.

One he lashed to a fence post. Another he wedged in the door of a rundown jeep on the side of the road. A third he knotted amongst the brambles of a particularly nasty bush that tried to take a piece out of him on one ill-fated pit stop to relieve himself.

With each, he left a letter. _W_.

 _West_ , he hoped his teammates would realize. _Follow me west._

Except—after that first horrible hour Kuwabara had spent here, when he'd witnessed so many lives snuffed out, he hadn't seen anyone else. Which was good, probably, because the odds were still stacked against him. Still only three in eighty-two.

Not great.

But all these empty fields were bad, too, because how the heck were the guys going to find his tiny clues in such a vast place? They weren't. They almost certainly weren't.

It didn't matter, though. No matter what, he had to keep going. He was Kuwabara Kazuma, after all. _Of course_ , he'd keep going. As long as he stayed alive, he stood a chance. In the meantime, he just had to trust the red string of fate. It was his lifeline, the tether keeping him together at the seams.

So trust it he would.

With any luck, that faith wouldn't get him killed.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **83**_ Alive

"Inert energy is how the Grounds were created. It's what keeps this whole shit show running, and it's what keeps Yokai—" Hibana flapped a hand toward the speck of silver hovering in the sky "—afloat."

Yusuke craned backward, glaring at the distant flash of silver and crimson. He was ready to toss a good, solid string of profanity its way, but before Genkai's finest curses could trip off his tongue, realization struck, creeping down his spine like melting ice and summoning annoying ass goosebumps across his arms in its wake. Gritting his teeth, Yusuke scrubbed at his biceps and swiveled toward Hibana.

"Would I feel it?" he demanded. "If I could actually sense energy crap right now, would I feel inert energy?"

Perched atop the rock she'd climbed, Hibana hesitated, head cocking. Beneath her hood's shadow, she was impossible read, but Yusuke was still pretty damn sure he'd just caught her off guard—in all the right ways.

"In the Grounds?" she said after a moment. "No. Here, we sense and feel and perceive only what the Grounds wants us to. That's why you can see my X-KAIROS even without your spiritual awareness. The Gamerunner wouldn't let us feel inert energy or any energy at all, for that matter. Not when it would give away Yokai—and maybe even reveal how to dismantle the Grounds from within. But outside? In the real world?" She extended a hand and hauled him up the boulder as she finished, "Yeah, you'd sense it. But you'd wish you couldn't."

"Because it feels… _wrong_."

She tilted her head back, her hood shifting enough that he could clearly see her brows rise over her dark eyes. "That's putting it mildly."

Yeah.

It was.

But Yusuke couldn't think of a better word for it—for that weird, fucked up, not-really-alive feeling that had pursued him through the halls of the abandoned lab in Demon World, right before he'd been knocked out and thrown in this hell. That energy had been _wrong_. Strange. Inhuman. Super freaking creepy.

And now it had a name.

Inert energy.

Somehow, that didn't make Yusuke feel better.

"It's leaving," Hibana said after a moment's quiet.

"Huh?"

"Yokai. It's moving on. Probably off to find another squad or solo to observe."

He followed her gaze upward, and as promised, the silver speck was drifting away, flying westward. "How many are there?" he asked. "How often do they need to switch targets?"

"I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet it's not as often as you'd like."

Shivering—and not just thanks to the temperature—Yusuke hunched his shoulders into the wind and frowned at the roiling ocean, refusing to look up at the retreating drone again. "Why's the Gamerunner so invested in creeping on us? And why'd you make it sound like he gives a shit whether I find my team?"

"I don't know the specifics. I'm not inside his head. But having a narrative? Having a story to root for? It can only help you in here."

Biting the tip of his thumb, Yusuke kicked a stone out of his path. It whipped off down the rocks they'd climbed and tumbled into the ocean's gray waves. Damn it—could this place be any grayer? Any more boring?

"Seems like a load of bullshit to me," he said after a beat. "I mean, seriously, Hibana. Think about what you just said." Adopting a crappy imitation of her voice, he mockingly added, "'Gosh, this psycho threw me into a big ol' death zone. That probably means he really cares about me finding my besties and frolicking off into the sunset.'" He snorted. "Not likely."

"Writing your enemy off as deranged is a surefire way to gift them an advantage over you."

Yusuke lurched to a halt so sharply that his backpack thudded against his spine. "Um, I'm sorry. That's what you took away from what I said?"

"You're my squadmate. That makes your weaknesses my weaknesses. So yeah, that's what I took from your whining." Hibana hadn't stopped to wait for him, and she was already scaling the next bluff as he lurched back into motion. "You shouldn't underestimate anyone in the Grounds—especially not the Gamerunner."

"Okay…" He drew out the last syllable, long and slow and as disbelieving as he could manage. Then, clambering up beside her, he demanded, "Do you ever lighten up?"

"Do you ever stop playing Twenty Questions?" She grinned at him, teeth flashing bright beneath the sun before she swung her head south and her hood blocked the light. Nudging Yusuke with an elbow, she pointed. "That's Lipovka. First pit stop on the way to the southern island."

And sure enough, there it was. A whole town unfurled before him.

Or, well, a cluster of buildings anyway. A village more than an actual town.

The rocks they'd climbed had brought them to the top of a cliff, and the high point they'd reached sloped to the south, rolling down to the distant outskirts of what Hibana had dubbed Lipovka. "Why stop there?" Yusuke asked, head tilted as he puzzled over the rundown buildings. "Thought we had no time for anything but getting to that military base you care so much about."

"We need more food, Urameshi. Water, too. Better weapons if we can find them. Not to mention a coat for you. There's plenty still to be scavenged." She shoved back her hood, and the wind caught strands of her hair, plastering them across her forehead like ink stains. "But since Yokai is gone, I'll answer your question, if that'll appease you."

He startled. "What's it matter if the drone is here?"

"Because what I'm about to say becomes meaningless if the Gamerunner knows about it. We can't manipulate him if he's aware we're trying to do so."

Manipulate the Gamerunner? In which question had he asked about _that_?

Scowling, he planted his hands on his hips. "Alright, get on with it, then."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, but keep moving. We don't have to time to keep stopping so you can glare at me. You'd think a prick like you would've mastered glowering on the move by now."

Despite himself, Yusuke sniggered.

He couldn't help it. Not for the first time, she'd tugged a laugh out of him when, by all rights, he should've been striking right back with an insult of his own. He couldn't put his finger on why exactly, on how she did it. Something in her tone. In the lilting, huffing laughter that followed her jibes. In the coy smirks that flickered across her chapped lips.

Choosing not to fight this new bout of chuckles, he marched ahead, leading for once, now that he knew their destination. "Don't you worry, I can glower with the best of 'em. I just didn't think you were equipped to handle my might."

"Oh, I assure you, Urameshi, I can deal with anything."

"Big boasts for a little girl."

She looked pointedly at the top of his head and practically sang, "Not so little, Mr. Oh-so-average."

He lobbed a lazy punch in her direction, aiming for her shoulder. It was as much a subtle test of her reflexes as it was a comeback, and he expected her to dodge or deflect, but—to his surprise—she did neither.

Instead, she disappeared.

Poofed out of existence.

Cloaked, as she'd put it.

A moment later, she was walking on his other side, hands in her pockets, head tipped back into the breeze, appearing from nothing as quickly as she'd vanished into it. "Time for your question, yeah?" she asked, calm as could be, as if she hadn't just whipped out a magic trick.

Yusuke huffed. "Seems like it."

"You wanted to know why Yokai follows the players—and it's about narratives, like I said. Or… that's my hunch. I can't know for sure." Hibana bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth, and peered at him sidelong. "See, the Gamerunner controls everything. Where loot spawns. When drops fall. Which dog tag is located where. If it's time for a new Red Zone—the area bombings like the one I found you in. He dictates all of that. But he's a person, just like you or me. Which means he's fallible to favorites, to contestants he roots for and ones he roots against. It means that if you can convince him you've got a story worth following, he might just end up inclined to keep you alive—or, at least, to up your chances at survival."

"And that's where my team comes in."

"Right. Because that's a damn good narrative, Urameshi. He put you in here, he separated all of you, but squad rules are in effect—and that opens up all sorts of opportunities." She swallowed roughly, her voice sputtering out for a second as she shifted her attention forward and pulled her hood back into place. "Nothing's guaranteed, and I'm not saying it will work or that it'll be easy, but if you make him care… It might help. Only _might_. But that's better than nothing, isn't it?"

Well, yeah.

Duh.

But how the hell was Yusuke supposed to make the bloodthirsty lunatic who'd trapped him here _care_ about anything more than seeing him smeared across a field like a bloodstain?

"And you suggest doing that how exactly? Am I supposed to turn on the waterworks? Blubber about Kuwabara's dumbass grin or Kurama's precious hair?" Unable to believe the words coming out of his own mouth, Yusuke added, "Oh no, I've got it. I should prattle on about Hiei's heart of gold, right? Because under his nasty exterior, he's just pure goo and happiness all wrapped up in a sparkling ball, and if someone could just wipe the dust off, he'd shine like a diamond—"

"Oh, shove off, Urameshi."

Yusuke barked a howling laugh. "But, seriously. I mean it. How do I spin this narrative you want? Guide me, because my emotional depth is pretty much a kiddie pool, and you're kicking me into the deep end."

Stifling a grin with her gloved hand, Hibana shook her head. "Well, no sense faking it without Yokai around to watch, but next time it comes back, tell me stories about them. How you met. How long ago. How you ended up a team. All that stuff. _I'll_ ask _you_ questions for once, and if you'd actually answer them—rather than being a combative ass—we'll be well on our way."

Yusuke rubbed his chin. "I guess I can swing that. But I make no promises about the mushiness of my answers."

"I doubt the Gamerunner would buy it if you were sweet anyway."

"A fair point."

Silence fell after that as Hibana picked up their pace, pushing Yusuke almost to a jog at times. Her focus stayed locked on Lipovka and its quickly approaching fringes, but all the while, the same question ran on repeat in Yusuke's mind, an unending loop until he couldn't help but set it free.

"So we've got my narrative, but what about you? What's your spin to woo the Gamerunner?"

Whatever humor had grown between them that morning evaporated at once. Hibana went rigid, her next steps landing rough and awkward in the dirt. For a second, Yusuke thought she wasn't going to respond or that she'd take a lifetime, like she had a few times now, when he'd seemingly asked a question she didn't want to entertain.

But he was wrong.

She _did_ answer.

And once she did, he wished he hadn't asked.

"I don't have a narrative, Urameshi. It died a long time ago."

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **2**_ Kills

 _ **81**_ Alive

The bandages healed Kurama.

They didn't stanch his wounds. Nor stifle his blood flow. Nor swaddle his burns.

They _healed_ him. As surely as Yukina or Botan or any other proper healer might. One moment, Kurama had been wrapping dirty, scuffed gauze around his ribs, half-certain he was dooming himself to infection but thoroughly sure he'd fall prey to worse if he left his injuries unattended. The next instant, the wound faded slightly, the bandages going with it, vanishing into the ether like they'd never existed.

Crouched in a thicket of sparse trees and thorny shrubs a half mile west of the ruins where he'd found Kuwabara's sign, Kurama allowed himself a single moment of nonplussed disbelief before digging to the bottom of his stolen backpack and unearthing two more sets of bandages.

The first roll's healing hadn't been localized to his ribs; rather, it had affected him at large, and as its effect set in, the woozy disorientation in his thoughts ebbed as surely as the wounds across his stomach closed and the burns on his calves lessened, but that first dose of healing didn't mend him entirely. His head still ached and blood continued oozed from the ragged, partially closed wound on his torso, unabated by his ministrations.

Hence the other next two rolls of dressings.

The second cleared his thoughts entirely, and as the cloth melded out of existence it left the skin beneath unruptured and nearly whole, only faint blistering on his shins revealing he'd ever been hurt at all.

In theory, he could've saved the third roll. His body didn't _require_ further healing.

But there was no telling how long ago Kuwabara had headed west, and if Kurama was going to catch him, he needed to be in immaculate form. No bruises. No headaches. No blistered legs. Besides, if this place was the virtual, false reality he suspected it to be, there was no sense harboring lingering injuries. As every video game he'd played over the years had taught him, capping off healing was never a bad idea—especially when one couldn't be sure when or where the next enemy might materialize.

In light of that, keeping the final wrappings was nothing but an unnecessary precaution. One Kurama wouldn't waste time on.

As soon as the bandages sealed around his ribs, the last of his injuries closed over—the blistered remains of his burns, the scrapes on his elbows from his clumsy fall, a split knuckle he'd accrued in the process of eliminating his second kill, all gone. Three minutes later, when he abandoned his bush and trekked west, guided only by the vague _W_ he'd discovered back in the ruins, Kurama was as hale and unhindered as he'd been the moment he'd woken here.

His jog set his new rucksack thumping against his back, and the dog tag he'd taken from his second victim hung at the hollow of his neck, fluttering against his skin with every step. It was an unfamiliar sensation. Frivolous ornamentation had been a joy of his life dozens of years ago—as Youko, when he'd lived heady with the grandiose glory of his finest thefts—but jewelry had played no part in his time as Shuichi.

Yet for all the necklace's oddity, he couldn't bring himself to remove it.

It had to exist for a reason.

He'd woken here without an iota of his own possessions, and he doubted any other combatant had roused themselves and discovered different circumstances. Which meant the woman he'd killed had found this dog tag and deemed it worth keeping.

Uncovering why she'd come to that conclusion, if nothing else, warranted keeping the necklace close.

But its mysteries weren't the most pressing at the moment. Right now, Kurama needed to find Kuwabara's next red string.

The first sign had been a minimal clue at best and a useless one at worst, but it had been _something_ to work with, and Kurama understood readily enough why Kuwabara hadn't left more detail. In the wrong hands, even that _W_ might suffice to get Kuwabara killed—or it could have, had Kurama not been the combatant to unearth it.

As things stood, Kurama had obliterated the marking before leaving the ruins, then cut free the red string and shoved it in his pocket. The move had been a calculated choice, the product of weighing pros and cons he'd dawdled over for longer than practical sense should've allowed.

Because on the one hand, yes, Hiei or Yusuke might've also stumbled across Kuwabara's clue, and if they had, their combined efforts might've seen their team reunited more easily. After all, the chances of four blind men stumbling across one another was greater than only two. But those were daunting—and unlikely— _ifs_ , and gambling upon them wasn't worth the promise of possible dividends. Better for Kurama to play his other hand, to bank on his own ability to track Kuwabara and hope to discover Hiei and Yusuke later, once he and Kuwabara could work as a team.

As it was, he'd already hesitated too long. He'd given Kuwabara even more time to build a lead, and stopping to tend his wounds hadn't helped in Kurama's chase.

But Kuwabara was smart. He'd leave more clues, and with any luck, he'd recognize those red strings would prove useless if he outpaced any possibility of pursuit. Hopefully, he'd move slowly. Hopefully, Kurama would catch him.

Soon.

Before someone else caught either of them.

* * *

AN: A wild Hiei appears! We went too long without an appearance from everyone's favorite ornery pipsqueak. The good news is, now that he's here, Hiei's a staple of the next few chapters. That said, everyone's on the move, largely in different directions (with Kurama as the notable exception, tailing Kuwabara as he is.) It's far too much fun plotting everyone's paths and possible intersections or missed encounters. As is establishing who knows what about the functioning of the Grounds.

I'm planning a LONG tumblr post that I'll hopefully manage to get up this weekend all about narrative, game modding, and their intersection with fanfiction, which probably sounds like a really weird post, but it's a gigantic part of what inspired this story, so hopefully I'll manage to write it out coherently. I'm 'hereafteryyh' over on Tumblr if you're interested in finding that post (and I posted a mood board for Hibana this week that I'm rather fond of, if that piques your interest).

Y'all just keep blowing me away with your reception for this fic. It's a bit outside the norm for YYH (and it's a rather daunting undertaking to write from so many POVs), so the response to this story so far has been beyond my wildest imagination! Thanks, friends, especially: Vulvarity, WistfulSin, roseeyes, Shell1331, MissIdeophobia, Laina Inverse, Guest (for seven reviews! I think all from the same beautiful soul?! Thank you, thank you, thank you!), Star Charter, and Sky65!


	8. You Beautiful Bird

_**Chapter 8: You Beautiful Bird**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **81**_ Alive

Lipovka was… pathetic.

And boring as hell.

Yusuke had been expecting some action. Maybe—at last—some other fighters. Kurama's old friend Logic kept nagging that Yusuke _shouldn't_ be hankering for a fight, that he should be hoping things stayed quiet, at least until he got his hands on a dog tag. But Logic was an asshole—and definitely no friend of Yusuke's.

Yusuke would rather be kicking ass than hiding inside a bunch of stupid, scratchy bushes any day. Even if it put his life on the line.

Hibana didn't seem to share that mindset.

Which was annoying. But also didn't actually matter, what with the whole this-town-is-a-deserted-boring-waste-of-time vibe Lipovka had going on.

"Alright," Yusuke muttered after an hour spent lying in the thickets around the settlement's perimeter, "are you planning to chill here all day or are we getting on with this thing? Don't we have a Circle to outrun?"

Hibana didn't move so much as an inch. "The Circle's not marked yet, Urameshi. It's barely even noon."

"I know that." He grimaced and pried a rock from the dirt, too bored to remain still any longer. He needed to _do_ something. "But you said once it shows its dumb self, we only have twelve hours before it closes, and then we may lose access to the military base—"

"Are _you_ lecturing _me_ on the Grounds' mechanics?"

"Uh…" _Right_. He didn't need to tell her all this. She already knew. And yet… they were still sitting here, still wasting precious time. "Look, I just don't get why we're spending forever on surveillance when we have a much bigger goal we should be focused on. This place is deserted. Even my nonexistent senses can figure out that much."

For the first time since they'd arrived, Hibana looked at him. Only for a second. Only long enough for the condescension in her eyes to make him want to pound her into the dirt. "Are you eager to die so early?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize empty buildings could kill me now—"

"They're not empty."

He cut himself off so sharply he nearly bit his tongue. "Come again?"

She pointed toward the town's western edge, straight at a car parked amongst bushes not so different from the bastards she and Yusuke had hidden themselves in. "That's not a natural vehicle spawn."

A spawn? Like how loot loaded into a video game?

Hell if Hibana's lingo for the Grounds wasn't wacky.

"How do you know that?"

Hibana inhaled in a way Yusuke was pretty sure meant _you're-such-a-fucking-idiot_ , but said instead, "When's the last time you parked your car on top of a boulder?"

Frowning, he glared back at the car, and that's when he saw it—a huge rock wedged beneath the car's undercarriage, lifting the front passenger wheel off the ground. Well, damn. How had he not noticed that before?

And what dumbass couldn't manage to park better than _that_.

"Dunno," he said in his most obnoxious drawl. "I'm a pretty shit driver."

Hibana's answering snort seemed like a poor attempt to stifle a laugh. "Good to know. If we ever get our hands on a vehicle, we won't put you behind the wheel. But the point still stands: someone brought that car here, and whoever it was may still be around."

"Is that a problem? Can't we just fight them? The sooner they're dead, the sooner we get out of here."

Hibana didn't reply right away, and as the silence stretched, disgust seeped beneath Yusuke's skin, oozing through his bones as he thought about what he'd just said—about how casually he'd suggested killing people.

For years, he'd spent his life fighting a slew of big baddies for Spirit World. But he'd been fighting for the greater good, and knowing that—knowing that he was _saving_ people—had made the blood on his hands tolerable. Usually, anyway. Because even then, even knowing that he was protecting Human World from horrors regular humans couldn't begin to imagine, it had still left him messed up. Toguro and Sensui and all the others… They'd still been people.

And at the end, when they'd died, it had been impossible to forget they were once kids just like him.

Now, in the Unknown Grounds, he couldn't even hide behind his role as Spirit Detective. If he killed, it'd just be Urameshi Yusuke, acting on his own—murdering players who were probably put here as forcibly as he had been.

To put it bluntly: it was fucked up.

He grimaced. "That came out wrong, but still, what does waiting out here get us?"

For another long moment, Hibana said nothing. Then, soft as a breath of wind, she murmured, "I don't care how bloodthirsty you are, Urameshi, trust me. I got distracted because I was keeping my eye on that."

Her finger rose, and he followed it. Up into the sky. Not to the small silver dot of Yokai, which had returned ten minutes into their stakeout, but to a larger, oblong silver shape. It was flying west and slightly north, slow and steady, and then, right before Yusuke's eyes, a crate released from its underside.

"Oh, you beautiful bird," Hibana breathed.

Understanding clicked into place for Yusuke. This must be one of the promised flyby drones, and therefore, they now had their first chance at an adrenaline shot.

About damn time.

Without waiting for his reaction, Hibana abandoned their hiding spot, breaking into a quick jog, bent nearly in half to keep a low profile. "Change of plans, Urameshi. If you want drops, here's your opportunity. Let's go."

He was already on her tail. In fact, he pushed her pace even faster.

His heart pounding in his temples, Yusuke kept his eyes locked on the crate's red-painted sides. It was way ahead, maybe three-quarters of a mile inland, still hundreds of feet in the air, but its descent had slowed as a parachute ballooned above it, and at this pace, it'd probably touch down at the same time they arrived.

Hibana, though, wasn't so singularly focused, and in his peripheral vision, he saw her head whip around in the confines of her hood, her focus swinging back toward the town they'd left in their dust, and then, between short pants of breath, she announced with dry, cutting sarcasm, "Well, whaddya know? Told you, we're not alone."

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **81**_ Alive

At noon on his second day in the arena, Hiei went on the hunt.

His strategy was simple.

This was a tournament. Disguised as some bullshit survival idiocy, but still a tournament. And it had one very clear, obvious goal: become the last fighter standing.

Right now, eighty foes stood in his way. Less if Hiei operated under the assumption that Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara were here, too. No matter what this tournament's rules might be, he wouldn't kill his teammates.

But the other seventy-seven?

They were dead fools walking.

And the sooner their corpses sat rotting beneath a cloak of flies, the sooner he was out of this place with the Jagan and the Dragon of the Darkness Flame back at his disposal—in other words, the sooner he was whole.

In the hours since leaving Severny, his path had taken a slight southern curve, following the network of roads he'd discovered. The ruins of civilization in this arena clearly resulted in no greater chance of encountering life, but they did promise gear—and that he'd needed, which had made the shambled streets a better alternative than roaming the fields and hoping to stumble upon a boon.

Now, though?

Hiei was fully equipped.

In an abandoned gun range a half mile back, he'd uncovered no firearms, but he had unearthed a blunt, heavy club to complement his machete, a set of daggers, and a slew of medical supplies he didn't plan on requiring. Plus, further food and a map of the battlefield.

It was an island, and therefore, there was no escape.

Hence the plan to hunt—and hunt viciously.

Though his senses had been stolen from him and his Jagan's power sealed out of reach, Hiei wasn't without means of tracking his prey. His years on the Border Patrol saving idiot humans from their even more idiotic natures had taught him the inglorious art of tracking humankind's lesser ilk with relative ease. Most of the weaklings he'd returned to Human World had possessed little to no spiritual power, and thus, chasing them down had been a matter of finding footsteps, noting broken branches, and—on his lowest of days, those when he most viciously fantasized about the tournament in which he'd make Enki pay for the nonsense of the Patrol—even tracing the humans' bowel movements.

Technically, yes, his Jagan could've tracked them with or without spirit energy, but he'd never stoop so low as to dishonor the Jagan's talents on such worthless pursuits. Which suited him just fine now, because though he'd yet to determine whether his fellow competitors were trained fighters or not, one thing was quite certain: they weren't minding their tracks.

Outside the deserted gun range, signs of life had been impossible miss. Snapped twigs. Crumbled leaves in the detritus beneath Hiei's boots. Snagged gray strings that could've easily been torn from coveralls like those he'd woken in.

The trail led west and slightly south, meandering and without purpose. Hiei followed it at a dogged pace, steady and unrelenting, but not pushing himself too far, too fast.

His body couldn't perform as it was meant to. This place had hampered him too heavily, and as much as he detested it, he knew better than to think he could override that weakness through sheer will. Insisting on a pace he couldn't keep up would only hinder him when his hunt bore fruit.

And fruit it _would_ bear.

Very soon, in fact.

The farther he ran, the fresher the tracks grew. His target's footprints—initially heavy at the ball of the foot and almost nonexistent at the heel, the sort of marks left by a jogger, moving quick on their feet—had begun to take firmer shape, the heel landing more often as exhaustion took hold. Hiei couldn't be far off now. Without a doubt, he was gaining.

More than that, he was gaining _fast_.

Then, up ahead, the steep hill he'd been climbing reached its peak, and as he crested the rise, a sharp descent opened before him—and there, not so far below, he found his quarry.

Short, but stout. Body honed to muscle, yet fatigued, bent over at the foot of the hill, hands braced on knees, chest heaving with each ragged breath.

And—quite clearly—not human.

Consternation drew Hiei's hands into fists, and he threw himself prone amongst the weeds, puzzling over the demon down below. Green, glistening scales peppered the man's arms, sheathing him in splotchy patches that shone beneath the sun, and as the demon gathered himself and straightened, his head swung first left, then right, revealing a long muzzle and jaws that tapered forward like those of a lizard.

For the moment, Hiei remained still and quiet, frozen in place as he ran calculations. He had time at his disposal to knock the facts he'd gathered into order; this lizard demon certainly wasn't outrunning him any time soon.

But the lizard was proof of a consideration Hiei hadn't previously taken time to dwell on: there were other demons here. Expectedly so, perhaps, considering he'd been captured in demon world, but the fool had been so brazen in his travels, so clumsy and detestably stupid—so fucking easy to follow.

Hiei had assumed, as a result, that he was tracking a human. He'd thought there was no demon in all three worlds who was such a shit survivalist that they'd leave a trail so blatant.

But here was this bastard, proving Hiei wrong.

And that thought…

It didn't sit right with Hiei.

Quickly, after confirming the lizard was still crouched below, huffing and puffing after his hike up and then back down the hill, Hiei shimmied back around, remaining prone all the while, and stared back the way he'd come.

What he found boiled his blood.

The lizard's tracks remained unaltered, but now, they weren't alone. Beside each, nestled amongst snapped twigs and disturbed grasses, waited another set of footsteps.

 _Hiei's_ footsteps.

Because this body—this forsaken, cursed, disaster of a body—had betrayed him. He'd kept his pace right, but he hadn't accounted for the rest. The heavier press of his feet owed to the longer time he spent on the ground with each step. The decrease in his peripheral awareness resulting from his dulled senses. How predisposed he'd become to sloppy movement.

Rage seethed in Hiei, hot and untethered, and a shake took root in his muscles as he seized his machete and glared down at the lizard demon below.

Fine, then.

He'd screwed up. Just as thoroughly as the lizard. But he wouldn't mess this up again.

Right now, his prey had to die. Then Hiei would get away from this place and the neon trail he'd carved through the wilderness. His retreat would be more calculated, more intentional. There'd be no more incidental tracks.

The hissing, snarling anger burning in his chest like a wildfire spurred him into motion, and as the lizard readied to take flight once more, Hiei leapt down the hillside, wild with fury. The sheer speed he gained sent him sailing into the lizard, his machete readied, and he let his momentum carry the rusted blade deep into the demon's guts.

But even with all that force, the machete was no comparison for Hiei's katana, and it took four more blows to end the lizard's wretched life. The dulled, hacking edge of the machete left the fool in tatters, his intestines spilling bloody and ravaged from his torso as the lizard crumpled to the earth.

It was over in seconds.

The prey dead. The predator not nearly satisfied.

Hiei had wanted a fight. He'd wanted to show this place who precisely he was. He'd wanted to demonstrate for all to see that nothing could ever smother his fire.

The lizard demon hadn't been that opportunity.

When his _Kill_ count jumped to _1_ , Hiei let his machete fall to his side and raised his head, surveying the forsaken land to the west _._ This kill hadn't placated his rage, but there was more prey to hunt. More enemies to fell.

Seventy-six others awaited him.

With that driving him onward, Hiei picked through the lizard's belongings, stealing what little he needed and abandoning the rest. Then he turned west, set his eyes on the horizon, and prowled on.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **80**_ Alive

"What's the plan?" Yusuke called. "How are we doing this?"

If they had pursuers—and Yusuke wasn't such a dumbass as to think Hibana would lie about that, even if he didn't trust his new, clumsy body enough to glance back and check for himself—then this wasn't going to be some leisurely looting trip. The crate was going to be contested, and if any of their opponents had wrangled themselves a dog tag, he didn't much like his chances in a brawl.

"Head straight for the crate. Get in, get out." Hibana's head whipped around for a second time. "I'll handle those three."

Three?

And she was going to take them on solo?

"Wait a damn second," Yusuke snapped over the thunder of their footsteps, "we're a squad for a reason, aren't we? You don't have to take them alone."

"We don't know what weapons they have," she argued. "I'm properly outfitted, but you aren't. Not yet. Let me engage them. If you find a dog tag in the crate, you can pitch in. Otherwise, grab the gear and start running south. If I can't put them all down, we'll just make a break for it."

"How? We can't outrun them. We've all got the same speed. That's what you said."

Despite their brutal pace, Hibana barked out a laugh. "Who said we're playing this on the straight and narrow?"

That answer was strange enough to tug his gaze from the crate for just a second, but she was already gone, falling behind him a step. Then there was a jerk at his backpack and the whine of a zipper, and he felt her pawing through the bag's contents. Ten seconds later, the zipper hissed again, and then she lengthened her stride just enough to draw even with him once more.

Two energy drinks dangled from her fingers, and she handed one off to him, then popped the tab on hers, tipped her head back, and poured the contents down her throat in one smooth gulp. Instantly—and uncannily—she sped up.

It was impossible to put into words, the way her movements shifted. Or didn't shift? Her strides didn't change. Her legs didn't lengthen. She just covered more ground, churning over the terrain at a pace he wouldn't be able to match no matter how desperately he tried.

What had she called these drinks? Mods?

After seeing one in action, that didn't seem like nearly as badass a name as they deserved.

A grin fighting its way to his lips, Yusuke thumbed back the tab on his can and drained it, the chemically sweet drink burning down his throat. The change hit him immediately, and not just as a burst in speed. He felt it everywhere. His whole body had quickened. His senses perked, sounds and sights processing faster, and every heartbeat seemed to take longer—like he'd fallen out of sync with the world, like someone had put him on 1.5x speed but left reality lagging behind.

It wasn't like having his energy back. He didn't feel like himself.

But hell, if he didn't feel real damn good.

They were closing on the crate fast now, faster even than it was falling, and with his senses sort of back to normal, Yusuke risked a peek over his shoulder. As promised, three other players were sprinting through the field after them, running flat out in a failing attempt to gain ground. Two men, one woman. They were a few hundred yards back now, but dropping farther behind with every step Yusuke took.

Or, at least, they had been.

Right up until Hibana stopped and doubled back.

Yusuke staggered to a halt, then jerked around. "What are you doing? The crate's up there."

"I know, Urameshi. Go to it. Be ready the second it lands. I'll buy you time." A flick of her right wrist brought one of her X-KAIROS to life between her fingers, the circling orbs glowing crimson, and Hibana threw him a grin so sinfully confident that adrenaline spiked through him in answer.

 _Fuck_. She was unbelievable.

For one second longer, Yusuke teetered there, unable to look away from her, but then the wind picked up and he heard the distinctive noise of air howling against stiff canvas and he realized the crate was almost here. Time was up.

His artificial speed still powering his every movement, Yusuke whipped toward the drop and sprinted the last hundred yards to the landing spot, then looked up and watched its final dozen feet of descent.

It landed with a thud, dirt bursting up around it, its metal sides groaning at the impact as the parachute that had guided its fall crumpled into a heap and spilled across the dry grass. Panting, his heart still battering against his ribs, Yusuke pawed past the canvas and found a latch in the crate's side. The hinge squeaked when he pulled, but it came free, and a door opened to the container's dark interior.

He held his breath as he leaned into the stale air within, hoping and refusing to hope all at once that he was seconds away from finding the adrenaline shot he needed. His blind groping turned up three items: a med kit patch, a heavy-duty jacket, and a leather bag containing three weighty spheres.

No adrenaline shot.

"Damn it," Yusuke hissed. "Fucking damn it."

Spewing more curses, he withdrew and yanked open the leather pouch, clinging to a last, desperate shred of hope, but the spheres inside definitely weren't weird protective cases for an adrenaline shot. Really, he had no idea what they were, other than not what he was after, and frustrated, he shoved both the pouch and med kit into his backpack before shrugging into the jacket

Then, just as the thick, durable cloth settled around his shoulders, the _Alive_ counter ticked downward.

 _79_.

Crap.

Hibana.

But when Yusuke scrambled around the crate's edge and got a good look at the field, he found not only Hibana, but her three opponents, too, all still on their feet. Before his eyes, Hibana ghosted, disappearing and then phasing back into sight twenty yards away, an X-KAIROS hurtling from her palm and detonating right in the face of the man farthest from Yusuke. Pained screams echoed across the field, rolling back off hills to the north, but Hibana had already ghosted a second time, and Yusuke didn't wait for her to reappear.

His pulse jumping in his temples and pounding in his fingertips, he stuck his head into the crate a final time and groped a hand across the cold, metal bottom. Searching and searching. Insisting by sheer force of will that a shot appear.

Then his nails grazed a flat, rounded edge, and something skittered away from his fingertips with the grating sound of metal on metal.

Well. It wasn't an adrenaline shot.

But a dog tag was nearly as good.

All but clambering inside the crate in a burst of haste, Yusuke snagged his fingers through the tag's chain and dragged it back out with him. Then he crouched in the dirt and turned the ID over in his palm until the engraved number on the back caught the light.

062.

Not his. Probably not one of the guys'. But still a tag. Still power.

Thrumming with the thrill of his find and the frenetic speed of the energy drink, Yusuke hauled the chain over his neck and let the tag settle at the hollow of his throat. For a moment, nothing changed. He didn't feel different, didn't have any sense of spirit or demon energy flowing in his blood, but when he tried to draw up energy like he would've to fire a Spirit Gun, it answered instantly, bubbling up in his veins and crackling over his skin.

And _crackling_ really was the right word for it.

Reflexively, Yusuke had raised his right arm, fingers flexing into their usual gun, but rather than gathering at the tip of his pointer finger, his newfound power—electricity, actual unchecked _electricity_ —snapped and sparked over his knuckles in sweeping currents that raised the hair all the way up to his elbow. Under his will, it popped and fizzed. Better yet, it _snarled_.

Ready for action.

Ready for a fight.

Just like Yusuke.

* * *

AN: Another dog tag! I have to say, deciding what powers to give the boys rather than their own, natural gifts is an interesting challenge. But definitely a fun one!

"Beautiful bird" is a phrase used by my favorite streamers to refer to drops in PUBG. In the game, drops come from planes and here from drones, so there's no actual bird, but I couldn't help using the phrase. It's just too silly and fun.

Big, fabulous thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! Thank you: MissIdeophobia, Laina Inverse, a Guest that I'm 99% sure is actually Shell1331 being betrayed by FFnet, WistfulSin, Star Charter, and roseeyes!


	9. Tagged 'Em

_**Chapter 9: Tagged 'Em**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **79**_ Alive

Yusuke thundered into the battle.

Literally.

The electricity coating his body brought with it a sizzling charge to the air, and as Yusuke sprinted across the field, aiming for the closest of the enemy trio—the woman, who'd ranged nearest to the drop crate—he threw out a hand, letting instinct guide him. The electricity arced forward in a wave. In its wake, a boom rolled, echoing back off the northern hills.

Fifty yards away, Hibana uncloaked, her head snapping in Yusuke's direction. Her hood obscured her face, but the way she'd frozen, for just a second too long, told him all he needed to know.

He'd shocked her.

Though—importantly—this time, _not_ literally.

But Hibana's moment of distraction had been too long, and one of their enemies closed on her, a wicked looking knife in hand. Though her body flickered, cloaking out of sight, the blade bit home. The effect was unsettling, blood flying up in a crimson arc seemingly from midair as Hibana ceased to exist.

Still, Yusuke didn't have time to worry about her. She could handle herself, and now that he'd joined the fray, he had an ass kicking of his own to dish out.

That first wave of electricity he'd let off had missed the mark. It didn't fly straight and true like his Spirit Gun. Instead, the crackling sparks zigged and zagged. Inconsistent and unpredictable.

Which wasn't ideal.

But wasn't the worst.

Hand-to-hand was Yusuke's preferred beat down method anyway.

The woman was ready for him now, though. He'd revealed his hand with that first, failed attack, and she was on the run, headed closer to her companions, probably banking on overwhelming Hibana before circling back for Yusuke.

 _Not so fast, lady._

Drawing on whatever remained of the energy drink he'd chugged, he put on the burners, sprinting as fast and hard as this not-actually-his body could manage. The ground blurred beneath his feet, a green-brown streak of dry grass and loose dirt, and with every step, the gap between him and the woman shrank.

Smaller.

And smaller.

Until he was right there, one spark-covered hand clamping over her shoulder and yanking her around just in time for his other fist to collide with her cheek. Electricity rippled off his skin, coating her, the static taking root in her hair and jumping across her face.

He was expecting her to scream—to go down and go down hard.

She did neither of those things.

And it was only as sunlight flashed off the dog tag at her throat that he understood why.

As it turned out, Lipovka must've turned up some profitable loot. Too bad these fuckers had beaten Hibana and him there.

Yusuke tried to generate fresh momentum, his knee driving toward her gut, but she dodged away, spinning out from beneath his grip and kicking a foot into his stabilizing leg—and then it was Yusuke going down hard, not her, as his leg crumpled, something popping inside his kneecap. A pained bellow bottled up in his throat at the sickening crunch, but he kept his thoughts straight, paying enough attention to scramble backward before she could wrangle proper hold of the knife shoved through her belt.

How had she done it?

Why hadn't the electricity crippled her?

She had a dog tag, sure, but that didn't make her immune to pain. It didn't return her to normal—or it shouldn't have, anyway. Yusuke's tag definitely hadn't.

Refusing to let his busted leg keep him down, he surged to his feet, leaning heavily into his good, right knee as he hurtled at her, more electricity charging down his arms, flooding the air all around them with sparks and static. This time, he didn't aim for a knock-out punch.

Nah.

He gave her a whole damn barrage.

Six hits in a handful of seconds. Two punches to the ribs. Another to the same cheek as before. A fourth to her left jaw. An uppercut directly to her gut. And last of all, as she bent over his fist, torso caving around the sheer force of his jab, he brought his skull cracking into hers.

That was the blow that leveled her.

She went down like a sack of bricks.

Chest heaving with every ragged breath, Yusuke kicked her onto her back. The bolstering thrill of a good fight had him in its grips, and coupled with stubborn pride born from even the Grounds' inability to rob him of his hardheadedness, that buzz of adrenaline was enough to bring his knife to his hands, steady and purposeful—and then cleave it clean across her throat.

Ending her. Instantly.

Because this was a death match. Because only one squad could win. Because that squad _had_ to be his. Because he—

The counters on his vision changed.

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **78**_ Alive

Those shifting digits were like buckets of ice poured down his back.

The body in front him, pinned beneath his weight, took shape. Black hair. Hazel eyes. Skin tanned as if from hours under the sun. A once elegant nose gone slightly crooked from an old break. A dusting of freckles.

But all of it covered in blood.

So much blood.

Yusuke's grip on the knife faltered. The blade came free of the woman's throat sloppily, tearing skin as it did. The cut had been brutal. Not clean. Not smooth like the high of a fight had made Yusuke believe. Because, duh, of course it hadn't been. Like he'd thought just the day before, Yusuke wasn't a swordsman. He was no good at this, no good with a knife. He wasn't Hiei or Kuwabara or even Kurama. He didn't fight this way. He used his fists, his Spirit Gun, and it wasn't so brutal, so up close. There wasn't so much blood. There were no gaping jugulars—

"Urameshi!"

He hadn't recognized the roaring in his ears until that moment, until Hibana's shout cut past the dread sucking him in and dragged him back to himself.

A second later, Yusuke lurched upright, whirling to face the rest of the fight. He had only a heartbeat to spot one of the men streaking toward him, making a break for Yusuke while his squadmate grappled with Hibana, before his ruined knee gave out when he forgot to favor it and sent him crashing back to the dirt.

"Fuck," he snarled as he struggled again to his feet. His injured knee screamed, burning with pain, but he got his good leg beneath himself and managed to brace for impact.

The percussive pop of an X-KAIROS detonating reached him in tandem with the enemy, but Yusuke couldn't spare a glance to check on Hibana. He was too busy deflecting the man's first blow. As he did, he grabbed his opponent's wrist and yanked, bending forward to send the man hurtling over his back.

In his next breath, Yusuke whirled, summoned lightning, and sent it pouring down his arms. The rush of sparking energy tore into his enemy, lighting him up. As the sparks jumped across his skin, the guy screamed, exactly as Yusuke had thought the woman would, but Yusuke didn't let up. Teeth gritted, he drew even more heavily on the dog tag, pushing more and more electricity down his arms until the man began to writhe and convulse, gripping at his head, fingers clawing like talons at his temples.

Unable to muster even a step on his busted leg, Yusuke dragged himself closer. His knife lay in the dirt, abandoned after he'd realized what it had done, but now he seized it again. Refusing to acknowledge the blood-slicked handle, he readied the blade, prepared to take another life—to make the _Kill_ counter tick to _2_.

But he made a mistake.

Yusuke looked the man in the eye.

And it almost broke him.

Because the man wasn't a _man_. Not really. He was young. Yusuke's age. Maybe even younger. Just a kid. Brown eyes, black hair. Hell, he could've been Yusuke's little brother. A twerp who'd tagged along on a mission he wasn't ready for. Now there was terror flickering in those familiar eyes. The wet-your-pants kind of terror, the kind that meant he was still in pain, his muscles twitching with aftershocks from the electricity Yusuke had shoved into his body.

Worse still, he was already dying. That much became obvious as the kid's gaze went glassy. Whether Yusuke cut his throat or not, his system had been fried too badly. It was just a matter of how quickly he went, not a question of whether he would—at least, not without the aid of a med kit.

Good thing, then, that Yusuke had those. He could give the kid one, get him back on his feet, maybe bring him into their squad. It didn't have to be this way.

Everyone didn't have to die—

Yusuke didn't hear the footsteps, didn't notice the _Alive_ counter decrease—not until it was already too late. One second he was tossing his dagger aside, readying to scramble into his bag for a medical patch, and the next, the club came down.

Once.

Twice.

On the third hit, the boy's skull cracked in two.

Dumbstruck, hands falling limp, Yusuke looked up, and there was Hibana. Bloody. Chest heaving. Hood knocked back. Cheeks pale beneath. But eyes hard, as cold and unyielding as obsidian.

The _Alive_ counter dropped again.

 _76._

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

Kuwabara was running out of red cloth.

He was down to a few fragments. Just a handful of scraps left. If he didn't find more soon, his whole red string of fate plan was going to crumble to pieces, and then he'd be back at square one—and he really, _really_ didn't want to return to square one.

Right as the _Alive_ counter on his vision dropped to _76_ , he crested a faint rise in the terrain and discovered a small cluster of houses just beyond it. Rundown. Beat up. But buildings. Which could mean people, but he doubted it. This spot was too isolated, and he had a feeling no one in this battleground wasn't a competitor, so it wasn't like he was about to stumble on some civilian hanging clothes out to dry in their front yard.

All of which meant this was probably as good a stopping point as any. He could root around a bit, see if he turned up any more red cloth to use for his markers, and better yet, he could get off his feet for a minute or two.

It was pathetic, but his feet _hurt_ from all the hiking he'd done through the morning, and he'd stopped twice already to dig rocks out of his shoes. A blister had swollen up on the underside of his big toe, and even though it was stupid to care about that, it ached. A lot. And he wasn't… used to that?

Kuwabara hadn't wrapped his head around it yet, but the differences in his body without his spirit energy were weird. He felt a little clumsier, a little heavier, a little slower—and a _lot_ more sensitive to discomfort. Heck, over his years fighting first against and then with Yusuke, he'd accrued more broken bones and bruised ribs and black eyes than any kid should reasonably suffer, and yet here he was, favoring his left foot because of a blister.

Was this what it was like to be normal? To just be any run-of-the-mill human?

Probably.

But if this was what regular humans felt like, had Kuwabara ever been normal? Way back when he'd had the Tickle Feeling and nothing more, had he still been weird? Or had he just forgotten what it meant to be powerless after so many years relying on his spirit energy?

Either way, he didn't like it. He hated feeling vulnerable. Weak.

He'd thought, at long last, that he was passed all that.

But apparently not.

Trying not to limp too blatantly, Kuwabara ran the last stretch to the buildings and ducked inside the first. Its windows were foggy, the glass smeared with dust and dirt or otherwise blocked with shabby curtains, keeping the sunlight piercing the gloom to a minimum, but he couldn't hear anybody else moving about inside, so he dropped his pack in the middle of the grubby kitchen, and then doubled back to the entrance.

Standing on tiptoe, he draped a flap of red fabric over the top of the door and pulled it closed, letting the cloth peek outside. That way, it'd show if one of the guys stumbled across this place, but he'd also hear the door open, even if he wasn't in this room. Kuwabara hoped that'd give him enough time to defend himself if it came to that.

His remaining three red scraps went up around the rest of the house's first floor—one wedged in the kitchen window, another snagged in the broken panes in the bathroom, and the last at the window by the stairs, right before he headed up, bag back in hand.

He hadn't slept since waking up here, and it was catching up to him. Fast. Judging by where the sun had been when he'd ducked inside—almost directly overhead—a full day had passed already. Which meant, not even counting the time before he was captured and knocked out, he'd been up for twenty-four hours. At this point, he needed sleep.

Even if it left him vulnerable.

On the building's second floor, Kuwabara ran a sweep of the rooms. It felt simultaneously stupid and like something straight out of the action flicks Shizuru loved to watch on rerun late at night, the TV blaring while he poured over assignments for his university classes. Except, if the SWAT guys in the movies had it right, he should've been running from room to room, shouting clear after he flung open each door.

Oh, and he should've had his team.

But this wasn't one of Shizuru's movies, and the guys weren't around to hear him yelling, so he kept quiet as he snuck from door to door, trying not to jump every time he caught sight of his own shadow.

Luckily, though, his search turned up nobody. Just a bathroom, three bedrooms outfitted with disgusting looking cots and stained mattresses, and a room that might have been an office, but now just housed a bunch of broken shelves and a collapsed desk. For today, it'd be home. Only long enough for him to catch some sleep. Then he'd move on.

Sighing, his exhaustion dragging like weights on all his limbs, Kuwabara hauled a jumble of furniture to the top of the stairs and barricaded himself in. A cot, a broken desk, a bookshelf, and a trio of side tables didn't exactly an impenetrable fortress make, but it was enough. If someone came up the stairs, the clatter they'd make getting through all this junk would wake him up easily, no matter how deeply asleep he might be.

His blockade complete, he gathered up a heap of mostly clean clothing from the bedrooms and laid them across the mattress with the least stains. Then he set his pack at the head of the bed and pulled out an MRE and his canteen. He fumbled his way through filling the heater pouch with some water before slipping the meal baggie within and propping it against the wall.

In the five minutes it took the food to warm, Kuwabara nearly fell asleep three times. Ultimately, it was only his hand accidentally brushing the scalding pouch that jerked him back to wakefulness, and resentfully, he scarfed down the beef stew between a series of unrelenting yawns, chewing so fast he barely tasted a single thing.

Only half-full but too tired to bother prepping another meal, he tossed the empty pouches to the floor and curled up on his side. Directly ahead, right at eye level, his serrated knife gleamed on the rickety bedside table, its blade caught in a weak beam of sunlight.

Ready, if Kuwabara needed it.

But, dang it, he really hoped he wouldn't.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **76**_ Alive

"You didn't have to kill him!"

Though a bolt of hot pain burst like a bomb in Yusuke's knee, it didn't slow him down as he shoved into Hibana's space, furious with a rage that made him see stars. He closed his fists around the collar of her jacket and shook her wildly. "We could've squadded up with him! He could've been our ally. We need more numbers anyway." Her jerked her closer, all but spitting in her face as he shouted, "He was just a kid, Hibana. A freaking kid!"

Her expression went blank, emotionless as slate—as unfeeling and cold and distant as Keiko had been the day Yusuke had left her. Except this was worse. Somehow, this was worse.

Yusuke had known for longer than he was willing to admit that it wasn't going to work with Keiko. Nothing had been right between them in months. Hell, maybe it had never been right between them at all. Maybe he'd been kidding himself from the get go. In the end, it didn't matter. They'd both known what was coming.

And Keiko being cold? That was just how she protected herself. Because after anger and shrieking and nagging, that was her last defense. The place she retreated after everything else failed. Withdrawing wasn't something she did to hurt him. It was just what she did to keep it together.

But Hibana…

What she was doing was different.

The ice in her eyes had nothing to do with guarding herself. If anything, it was like she was shielding… him? Like pulling away was for Yusuke's sake, not her own?

He wasn't sure why it seemed that way. Maybe because she didn't crumple inward like Keiko always did. Her shoulders didn't roll forward. Her chin didn't tuck down. Instead, she straightened, her head rose, her chest expanded, and suddenly, the air around them wasn't neutral territory—it was hers, and he'd waltzed right into it.

With sharp, methodical precision, Hibana reached up and pried Yusuke's hands from her collar, then stepped free of him. Her boot knocked against the corpse at their feet, but if what she'd done had rattled her, it didn't show through her frozen mask. "Oh, we'd just squad up, would we? You think it'd be that easy? That after we killed his teammates, he'd want to work with us?" She was like a teacher back at Sarayashiki Junior High, quizzing Yusuke, putting him through his paces, reminding himself as concretely as possible that 'dimwit' didn't nearly cover what a dumbass he was, how completely stupidity defined him.

"And even if we hadn't killed his first squad," she said, "where do you think letting him join our team would get us? Everyone can't survive, Urameshi. People are going to die. You can't join up with every opponent we come across."

"I didn't say we would. But him—" He flung a hand toward the body, but he couldn't look down, couldn't see that dead kid for himself. "We didn't have to kill _him._ "

"Yes. We did." Shaking her head, she pressed a palm against her ribs, and for the first time, he realized how badly she was bleeding. Not to mention how washed out and hollow her cheeks looked. _Damn it_. The kid hadn't been the only one who was already dying. "And we'll have to do it again, Urameshi. And again. And again. Those are the terms of the Unknown Grounds."

Her voice broke.

Just for a second. Just on one word.

 _Terms_.

And Yusuke thought maybe there was something else she'd planned to say. Or that she couldn't bring herself to admit. Something like, _I'm sorry_.

But she didn't say it.

Without another word, she knelt in the bloodstained dirt and rifled through the boy's pockets. Her search turned up nothing, and she rocked back onto her heels with a tight sigh, like she'd caught a whimper in her teeth. "He's got nothing worth taking."

Grinding his teeth against words he'd regret later, Yusuke shrugged out of his backpack. "You need a med kit."

Hibana shot a pointed look at his knee. "As do you."

"Yeah, whatever. We have two. Let's just use them."

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, chewing at chapped skin as she turned to survey the field. Then she heaved another sigh and nodded. "Right. We need to get out of here. Fast. Before other squads come for the drop."

Yusuke didn't answer. He just pulled out the patches, tossed her one, and tore open the foil on his own. Once he slapped it on his arm, he counted mentally, waiting the ten seconds for its effect to kick in. The moment it did, his knee stopped hurting like a bitch. Instantly. Like flicking a switch.

Hibana must've applied her own while he was distracted, because when he looked up from testing his knee, she'd pulled back her bloodied shirt to reveal uninjured skin beneath. The wound her first victim had opened before she could ghost to safety had closed over, and the color had come back to her cheeks.

Her eyes still looked dead, though.

"It's not easy for me either," she said after a moment's silence, and for a second, he was too surprised to muster an answer. He'd seen remorse in her minutes ago, but he hadn't expected acknowledgment—hadn't thought she'd ever voice it aloud.

"Then how do you do it?"

She pulled up her hood and waved for him to follow as she jogged across the field, headed toward the woman he'd taken out. Sick of her evasive bullshit, Yusuke snagged her wrist and jerked her to a halt, nearly yanking her feet out from under her in the process.

"How, Hibana." Not a question. "Tell me."

"Urameshi…"

"Say it. Just fucking say it and get the bullshit over with."

She turned toward him slowly. Robotically. And when she finally answered, her words came out stilted and awkward. "Because I have to. Because it's the only way we can get out of here. And if I could've spared you your first kill, I would've. But I failed."

And that's when he got it—why she'd gone all cold and distant. Because she was protecting him, but also, because she'd _failed_ to protect him. She hadn't kept him from the fight. For all her efforts to send him away, to handle this alone, he'd still gotten his hands dirty. And then he'd yelled at her. Attacked her. For delivering the blow he'd been too weak to dole out himself.

For making the decision that had to be made.

He shook his head and dropped her arm. "Don't be stupid. If you're gonna give me some kind of half-apology, do it for trying to shoulder all of this alone. Not for letting me do my part." Stepping past her, he set his sights on the woman's ragdoll body in the grass. "She had a dog tag, by the way. Not sure what it does though."

He half-expected Hibana to argue more. To actually apologize. But he should've known better. Hibana didn't seem like the type to waste feelings where they weren't wanted.

Instead, she said simply, "And you found one in the crate. So you've got a full set now, Urameshi."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

At least that was something.

* * *

AN: Chapters like this are why I'm in love with writing this fic. I hope the action and Yusuke's moral quandaries were as fun to read as they were to write, because _hot_ _damn_ , they were fun to write. (Also, because what's a good action scene without an accompanying soundtrack, I wrote this chapter while listening to Shutemdown by Celldweller. Check it out if you're interested!)

'Tagged 'em' is a term my favorite streamers use when they've hit or injured an opponent, but not yet killed them. It felt appropriate to Yusuke debilitating his second victim here (thus tagging him), but failing to make the kill. As with most things my fave streamers say, I have no idea if it's a term a lot of gamers use, but it's a phrase that's basically ingrained in me at this point.

Ridiculously ginormous thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! The incredible kindness y'all show this fic leaves me wordless. Thanks for coming on this ride with me: Laina Inverse, DeathAngel457, Shell1331, roseeyes, Aly Goode, Jayjenkins101, and WistfulSin!


	10. Pinned, Unpinned

_**Chapter 10: Pinned, Unpinned**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

Kuwabara woke to rain.

It came down in sheets, splattering through the broken window and misting across his cheek. A droplet gathered in his eyelashes, wet and heavy, and he rubbed it away, sitting up with a groggy yawn. Had he left the window open? Or was this some stupid prank from Urameshi? There hadn't even been rain on the forecast, had there—

That thought died before it picked up steam. Right. The forecast didn't matter. He wasn't home in Sarayashiki anyway.

The chemical odor of ozone broke through the damp scent of a rainstorm as lightning forked beyond the window, way too close for comfort. Almost jumping out of skin, Kuwabara swung him legs out of bed. The dark thunderheads obscuring the sky made it impossible to tell how long he'd been out, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours.

Groaning, he braced his head in his hands, his fingers curving over his temples, his palms pressed to his eyes. If he went out in that storm, even the sturdy jacket he'd scrounged up wouldn't keep rain that torrential from soaking him to the bone—and if the stupid blister under his toe was anything to go by, he probably wouldn't handle the ensuing discomfort of wet clothes very well.

Weak.

That was really freaking weak.

Hiei would rake him over the coals for it. He'd never let Kuwabara live it down if he knew. But then, Hiei wasn't here, was he? So it wasn't like he'd know. If Kuwabara hunkered here for hours, Hiei would never be any the wiser.

Besides, Kuwabara wasn't ready to move on yet. He needed to find some red cloth first. Maybe scarf down another MRE. Give this building—and the ones around it—a thorough search for supplies.

He'd have to be ready, of course. No one in their right mind would want to stay out in a storm like this. If other competitors were near, they might try to hide out here, and he'd need to weigh his chances against them at a moment's notice. If there more than two, trying to take them on would be a death sentence. After all, it was pretty fucking obvious his fellow fighters weren't as cruelty adverse as he was.

The _76_ glowing in the corner of his vision was proof of that.

Scrounging another MRE out of his bag, he poured water into the heating pouch, slipped the meal bag within it, then downed the rest of his canteen. He'd need more drinking water soon. If the taps worked in this house, that'd solve it, but if not, he'd have to bank on the local water being clean enough to drink—and that wasn't a prospect Kuwabara wanted to rely on.

A dehydration headache already drumming behind his eyes, he scooped up his canteen and plodded into the hall. The bathroom was less than appealing with mold growing around a leaking faucet in the shower, but leaks meant running water, and the pipes had to have a better shot of not poisoning him than anything he'd find in a stream or pond, so he cranked the sink's handle and stuck his mouth straight under the flow that burst forth. A dozen gulps of metallic nastiness later, he'd drunk his fill. Quickly, he filled his canteen, too, then popped across the landing to the next bedroom.

Red cloth had to be somewhere. He'd found it once. He could find it again.

But his search of the house's bedrooms turned up nothing, not even when he doubled back for a second pass. Empty handed—and more than a little frustrated—Kuwabara returned to his pack only to discover there was a reason MREs said to only cook them for five minutes.

The pasta inside the pouch had turned to lukewarm mush, and he chewed through the lot with his fingers pinched over his nose, glaring at the streamers of rain pouring past the window. This place was worse than anywhere he'd ever been—worse than Hanging Neck Island, worse than the Plateau of the Beheaded, worse than the deepest dredges of Demon World he'd ever explored.

And maybe that wasn't really saying anything. Hiei had probably seen worse. Kurama and Yusuke, too. But really, did that matter? This still sucked balls.

Once he'd choked down the last of his food, Kuwabara tossed the pouches beside the first, shoved the rest of his gear into his bag, and grabbed his knife. No red cloth here meant he had to search elsewhere. The other buildings clustered around his hideout were a good place to start, and if he was quick, he wouldn't end up too soaked in the process.

After one last scan around the room, he trucked for the landing and the barricade he'd heaped at the top of the stairs. Here was the flaw in his grand defensive strategy. Yeah, no one would've gotten through, but now he couldn't exactly get out, either.

Outside, thunder boomed, another fork of lightning coming down, and water leaked through a soaked patch in the ceiling, droplets plopping into Kuwabara's hair as he yanked apart the blockade he'd build. The desk, the nightstands, the disgusting mattress—all shunted behind him into the bathroom.

Then he was down the steps and back in the rundown kitchen. The cabinets turned up little worth taking. Just more of the same supplies he'd already seen. Beef jerky. Dried fruit. A few cans of beans or stew or something—some manner of slop identified in illegible Russian. It was bizarre—how the same food was everywhere, as if someone had stocked this whole island with copies of identical junk. It definitely was normal. Or natural.

Not that it mattered. Kuwabara still took the jerky and fruit, shoving the foil pouches into the front pocket of his bag. The rest he left behind. Cans were too heavy to bother with.

Stocked with everything he could get his hands on, he freed his red cloth from the kitchen window, then broke for the bathroom. As long as he had one at his disposable, he was using a toilet. With the storm as cover, he'd even risk flushing it.

He wasn't an animal.

Not yet.

In a flash, he washed his hands, scrubbing the dirt from them with cold water, then retrieved the second of his remaining fabric strips. Ignoring his pale reflection in the grimy mirror, he turned for the front door and the window where he'd hung his final red strip.

It was just as his fingers worked the knot free that another thunderclap rolled off the hill to the east, back where he'd come from. In its wake, the rain quieted, just a notch, just for a second—and that's when he heard them.

Unmistakably.

Voices.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **2**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

Under the deluge pouring from the sky, Kuwabara's trail went cold.

Kurama had tracked it north along a dirt road. Repeatedly, he'd thought he'd gone awry, only to spot scrap of red each time he contemplated turning back. But now, with lightning fizzing across the horizon and rain falling like staccato war drums, he'd well and truly given up the ghost.

In the dark of twilight, finding the red cloth would've been hard regardless, but it was impossible now. Even if he were still on the right course, the strips' color would've been marred by the rain, those bright pops of red turned nearly black with moisture.

All of which left Kurama rather stranded.

And more than a little vexed.

Rain like this wasn't natural. Not in Human World. Not in Demon World. Not anywhere. Except here. In this place that was little more than a facsimile of reality.

The clouds had not swept in on a steady wind, nor crept over the horizon, nor gathered into daunting thunderheads. One second, they hadn't existed at all, and the next, the world had gone gray as a monsoon opened overhead. The spectacle had sent hooks of disquiet deep beneath Kurama's skin, his instincts warring against the impossibility of rain so uncannily summoned.

There was only one explanation.

External interference. Someone—whoever had locked him in here, no doubt—had flipped a switch, perhaps literally, and this storm had answered.

Which raised the question of _why_.

Why now? Because of Kurama? Because he was close to finding Kuwabara? Or because other contestants had ensnared themselves in some skirmish he wasn't aware of?

Or maybe for none of those reasons. Maybe this rain had arisen out of nothing more than boredom. Over the last three hours, while Kurama hiked down from the hill where he'd found Kuwabara's first signal, dusk had gathered like a cloak of swirling darkness, and with it had come quiet—a lull in the dropping of the _Alive_ counter.

Perhaps the operator of this battle had desired a change of pace. Or perhaps Kurama was assigning agency where there was none, looking for patterns in chaos that could not be rationalized. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Too many unknowns. Too few answers.

Worse still—now, Kurama lacked even a trail to follow.

Within minutes, the rain had soaked through him, and he paused a moment in a thicket of white elms, lashing back his hair with the latest of clue he'd gathered from Kuwabara. Up ahead, barely visible through the gloom, he spotted four buildings, clustered close together. A possible hideout to escape the rain—but only if it were already deserted.

And _that_ it was not.

Four figures were closing on it, moving in a tight pack. Working together, clearly. At this distance, Kurama couldn't make out particulars, other than that one was hulking brute, the other three slighter and quicker.

If forced, he'd take on two opponents at once. But four? For something as meager as shelter to ride out a storm? There wasn't even the remotest change he'd dally in such folly.

Let them have the houses. He'd find a place that better fit his needs. Then, once the rain stopped, he'd circle back and resume his search for Kuwabara's signals.

But as Kurama turned to meld into the leaves, he saw it from the corner of his eye. Just for a moment.

Movement in an upstairs window.

Prey caught in its predator's teeth.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **76**_ Alive

"Dang," Yusuke whispered as Hibana breached the side door of the house she'd chosen for the night's hideout. "We're upgrading, huh?"

"Oh, yes. It's absolutely palatial," she muttered back, every last syllable dripping with sarcasm. "Now, shut up."

Nah. Shutting up was not on his agenda.

Zipping his trap meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering the look in that kid's eyes right before Hibana turned his skull to pulp, and remembering meant bending over in the doorway of their new home and yakking up everything he'd eaten since entering this fucking hellpit.

So yeah, no shutting up.

"I'm not even kidding, this place makes mine look like a homeless shelter."

Hibana didn't so much as glance at Yusuke, instead slinking deeper into the house's shadows, water dripping from her jacket and muddy footprints smearing across the kitchen tiles as she went. Or well, not really smearing, since every one of her steps was so damn exact. Someone could've molded the bottom of her boot from the perfection of the prints she left behind.

When she didn't answer immediately, Yusuke plowed ahead with more nonsense. "I mean, don't go telling Kuwabara since my abode is basically just his couch at the moment, but at least there're multiple rooms here. Kinda knocks his ugly three-room apartment into the stratosphere."

At last, Hibana whipped around to face him. An X-KAIROS burned red and raging in her right hand, but her left clamped around his collar as she snapped, "You really don't know how to shut up, do you?"

Yusuke only shrugged. "What's the point of company if we're just going to sulk around like loners?" Grinning, he leaned in until their noses nearly grazed. "You know, you'd probably get along grand with Hiei. He's got his thong wedged as far up his ass crack as you do."

Honestly, he expected a slap. Hell, he even braced for it. A good ol' palm direct to the cheek.

But it didn't come.

Which, admittedly, he probably should've anticipated. Hibana wasn't anything like Keiko in any other respect. Why start now?

"Yokai isn't here. Save the gibbering about your team until it shows up." Hibana's command came in a flat monotone, sullen enough to make Hiei at his most depressing proud, but no sooner had she said them than did one of her huffing laughs shiver through her shoulders. "I'll sweep upstairs. You check down here. Gather any good supplies and block up the doors and windows best you can. The more fortified we are, the better chance we stand if someone finds us tonight."

Yusuke snapped a salute. "Aye, aye, boss."

Rolling her eyes, Hibana released him and headed for the stairs, her X-KAIROS still cocked and ready. He stared after her—longer than he probably should have. It was a shame her clothes were battle appropriate, instead of the form-fitting leather get-ups from action movies.

Grimacing, Yusuke shook his head and turned away. That was a dimwit thought through and through. A bunch of stupid hormonal junk he most definitely didn't have time for—not if he wanted to find an adrenaline shot, locate his team, and get the heck out of here.

Generally speaking, he suspected Hibana would advise against getting too comfortable, but Yusuke didn't really give a rat's ass what her military training might dictate, and he shrugged out of his sopping wet jacket without a second thought. It squelched as he tossed it on the kitchen counter.

Gross.

He heaved a sigh, dragged his fingers through his damp hair, and surveyed the dreary first floor. Graying, peeling wallpaper. Rotting floorboards by the front door. A cracked window in the living room—which he could only see because something had blown a hole through the wall separating the kitchen from the sitting area.

Palatial, Hibana had said. What a crock of shit.

He should've laughed harder.

Still, even palaces needed fortifications, and Yusuke set about dragging furniture toward the doors, pushing a couch against the front door, thoroughly surprised when it didn't crash straight through the weakened flooring, then dragging twin bookcases in front of the living room's windows. Whenever his efforts turned up something valuable—be it a weapon or a roll of bandages or a pill bottle—he tossed the goods into the center of the living room, accumulating a pile they could pack up before they rolled out in the morning.

All the while, he let electricity spark and dance over his hands, trying to adjust to the strangeness of this power. He'd rather take his Spirit Gun any day, but at least it generated good short-range damage.

It was better than his other tag and its shields.

When Yusuke drew on that second power, a faint shimmer glowed over his skin, coating him, probably from the tips of toes to the crown of his head if he had to guess, and if someone hit him with an energy attack, the shield would probably deflect it well enough—just like it had his lightning—but playing defense wasn't exactly his style, and there wasn't a power in the three worlds that could be a more disappointing nab.

Turns out, Lipovka didn't have good loot after all.

Though… considering Yusuke had already cost them two first aid patches singlehandedly, Hibana would probably argue a barrier was _exactly_ what he needed.

To which he'd rebut: fat lot of good it had done its original owner. He'd rather have an X-KAIROS in his hand than a shield on his arm.

In ten minutes, he'd clogged up the entrances with every available blockage he could get his hands on and worked out the best escape route—shoving aside the bookcase in front of the living room window would be quickest. After twenty, he'd sorted his jumble of supplies three different ways, debating which system Hibana would most approve of. By the time a half hour passed, he'd shoved the whole lot back into a heap and begun to pace.

Was the second floor _actually_ a palace? Or had she peaced out on him? Because there was no way in hell clearing out one story should've taken this long.

Checking one final time to confirm he'd blockaded everything that needed it, Yusuke crept for the stairs, then climbed them slowly, easing his weight onto each one as gently as he could, hoping to avoid giving his approach away. It was probably dumb, especially if Hibana had just up and disappeared, but if there was the off chance she'd been captured or something—though not killed, since the _Alive_ ticker hadn't changed—then he shouldn't give himself away.

Two rooms broke off from the landing, and the one to his right was empty other than some beat up bedroom furniture, but in the room to his left, he discovered Hibana.

She sat almost seiza-style facing the far wall, calves folded beneath her thighs, butt resting atop her heels, but she'd bent forward at the waist rather than sitting prim and proper and her forehead bowed all the way to her knees, her back slightly curved. Like Yusuke, she'd discarded her jacket, abandoning it in a soggy heap. Hidden only beneath her damp, gray t-shirt, the knobs of her spine stuck out, and a stark white scar formed a ridge down the back of her right arm. She'd pulled up her hair, tying it at the crown of her head, only small wisps still falling along the column of her neck.

Exposed like this, she looked vulnerable for the first time since they'd met, and Yusuke couldn't tell if she was praying or meditating or just taking the weirdest nap he'd ever seen, but he got the distinct sense that interrupting her now was a sin he shouldn't commit.

Yet as he turned to go, his attention caught on the wall ahead of her—specifically on numbers engraved in the plaster.

 _ **017**_

 _ **051**_

 _ **068**_

He spotted the knife laid out beside her, its blade dirtied with flecks of dust.

 _Oh_.

Well, fuck.

He swallowed roughly, her posture taking on new meaning as those numbers clicked home. This wasn't prayer or meditation.

It was mourning. Grief.

Pain.

And it wasn't for Yusuke to intrude on. For once in his life, he could be patient. He could respect boundaries.

Yet even still, he lingered, just for a moment longer, imagining what Hibana might do if he joined her there, if he knelt at her side and pressed his forehead to his knees, if he laced his hand through hers—if they coped as one. Then he blinked that image away and turned his back, slipping down the stairs as quietly as he'd climbed up.

Time to take watch. For as long as she needed.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

Beneath a fresh detonation of thunder, the voices faded into oblivion, but Kuwabara was already retreating, racing up the stairs, his bag thudding against his shoulder blades.

There'd been a lot of voices. Too many. One deep and clearly male. The other three higher. Maybe all women? He couldn't be sure, not with the rain so loud and the thunder so relentless. Either way, it didn't matter. Even a single woman meant that group wasn't comprised of his friends. Its members weren't Yusuke and Hiei and Kurama—and that made them enemies.

He had to get out of here. Fast. _Before_ they trapped him up here forever.

Downstairs, hinges whined, the front door banging open. The impact of it rattled through the whole building, reverberating in the floorboards beneath Kuwabara's feet.

Of all the houses, why the fuck did they have to pick his first?

Praying they couldn't hear his heavy footsteps, he broke for the window in the room where he'd slept. Bits of broken glass remained stuck in the frame, and he knocked them out with thrusts of his elbow, then checked his bag was secure, the straps almost strangling in their tightness, and clambered out onto the windowsill.

For a second, his butt hung over the void, his feet still inside, his hands grappling at the top of the frame, but then he got his feet beneath him and reached upward, straining to hoist himself on top of the roof. If he escaped on the ground, they'd probably spot him, but from up above, he could wait until they moved on—and just pray he didn't get hit by lightning in the meantime.

Or that was the plan, anyway.

Right up until the rotting shingles gave out under his grip.

He'd dug his fingers into the grooves between the slats, but just as he hoisted his weight upwards, the tiles ripped free of the nails holding them in place—and before he could so much as scream, Kuwabara pitched backward into emptiness.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **2**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

The movement took shape.

An elbow smashing through a window. A broad-shouldered back emerging. Long arms extending up, up, up until grasping fingers took hold.

Then shingles broke. Betrayal sent that familiar body sailing out of the window.

Kurama broke into a sprint, racing out of the trees, eyes locked on Kuwabara as he hit the ground in a spurt of mud and water runoff. In a matter of seconds, the other figures were at the first-floor windows, peering out at the man huddled in the dirt.

And Kurama knew what they were thinking—knew what he would've been thinking. This was an easy target. Simple pickings. A kill they could notch so fast it was almost comical. But their calculations were wrong. They hadn't accounted for Kurama.

Then again, Kurama's computations were off, too.

Because it was instinct that reached for the demon energy no longer nestled within him—but it wasn't instinct that answered back. It wasn't the grass beneath his feet or the white elms at his back. It wasn't a thousand years as Youko Kurama or twenty-five as Shuichi Minamino.

It was something unfamiliar, something in his bones and muscles and flesh, in his sinew and blood and nerves—in his haunches and his feathers and his talons.

And as the very makings of his body transformed, so too did his strategy.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **76**_ Alive

The fall knocked the breath from Kuwabara's lungs.

His back hit with crushing force, his spine slamming off a slab of broken concrete as the world went momentarily dark. For an excruciating second, he feared he'd snapped his spinal column clear in two, that he'd never stand from this spot, that is was over—all of it. His life ended. Here. Right now.

But in his next breath, he was rolling onto his side, years of hitting the dirt taking over. He'd been knocked down, but he'd get back up. He was Kuwabara Kazuma. Getting the shit beat out of him and taking it like a man was sort of his whole deal, _damn it_.

The rain slid icy fingers beneath the collar of his shirt, but the chill only served to remind Kuwabara he could still feel, and he scrambled through the mud, boots churning up gouts of gunk as he turned for the distant trees and started to run. Time to get away. Whatever element of surprise he might've had definitely went out the window when he did, and he wasn't interested in finding out how bloodthirsty his visitors were.

Too bad he was so dang slow.

Two women appeared first, rounding the corner of the building ahead with a speed that wasn't natural. In unison, they sank into eager fighting stances. Energy glowed around the fists of one, and he thought immediately of the killer he'd seen on the first day—a woman laying claim to a car, but not before murdering the two men who'd sought to stop her.

Was this the same girl?

Maybe. Probably.

Either way, she was armed with energy, and he wasn't. Didn't take a Kurama-level genius to work out he couldn't win this fight.

Arms windmilling, Kuwabara broke to the right. His legs almost went out from under him, pitching him into the mud, but he planted a hand and pushed off, maintaining momentum as he hurtled north. He'd wanted to head west, to the trees and the cover they provided, but with that path cut off, he had to improvise. Whatever it took to get out of here, he'd do it—

A broad shoulder slammed into his ribs, leveling Kuwabara in an instant.

He went down in another eruption of sludge and muck and icy water, the world spinning, a shadowy shape looming above him. Somewhere to the north, lightning forked, and the flash illuminated the side of the man's scarred face. Misshapen nose. Heavy brow. Laughter roaring in eyes dark as midnight.

Then a fist came down, catching Kuwabara across the jaw.

He saw stars, his world narrowing down to what had to be a shattered bone in his jaw, but he shoved backward, sliding out from beneath his attacker and clambering to his feet. That punch was strong, but it hadn't been energy infused. It was just a regular old punch—and it sure as hell wasn't anything like Yusuke used to dole out, not even as a kid.

"Easier if you just give up," the man said. His words rumbled like fresh thunder, his giant barrel of a chest heaving as he chuckled. "You're a dead man already."

Off to Kuwabara's right, the woman with the glowing fists scoffed. "End him, Gaku. Or I will."

The man stepped forward, but not before tossing a sneer at his ally. "Shut up, Hikari. Ain't nothing wrong with a little mercy for an idiot."

While Gaku's attention was split, Kuwabara tensed, waiting for the moment he wanted, the sliver of weakness, the one chance he might have to get away—and when it came, a blur in his peripheral vision that might've been an energy-coated middle finger drawing Gaku's gaze fully to the side, Kuwabara swooped. Palm cupped, he threw up a wave of mud that splattered across Gaku's face, and as the man sputtered, pawing uselessly at his obscured eyes, Kuwabara bolted.

Hikari tossed a stream of vile curses at her hindered teammate, but judging by the pounding footsteps behind him, her anger didn't keep her rooted in place. Gritting his teeth, Kuwabara tried to push his legs harder, straining to speed up, but it didn't work. His pace stayed steady—controlled as if by someone else—and in the end, it wasn't Hikari who caught him, but the third woman. The one he'd forgotten about.

She'd hidden behind a boulder along the side of the dirt road leading toward the coast, and as he passed the rock, she sprung. He wasn't defenseless, though, and he deflected the first thrust of her knife, then retaliated with his own. The serrated edge caught and tore through her gray coveralls, but he couldn't tell if its teeth found flesh.

Behind him, the footsteps were closing. Three sets. Too many enemies. Hitting him all at once.

There was nothing he could do, no way to swing the tide. Four was too many. Way, way, way too freaking many. Fucking hell, how had he got caught like this? He'd failed. He'd screwed up. And now, not only was he going to die, but he was going to abandon his team, too, and that was more dishonorable than—

A screech rent the air.

It cut past the drumming rain. It silenced the distant boom of thunder. It drowned out even the panic of Kuwabara's spiraling mind.

A noise like that wasn't the cry of a human or the barbarian bellow of a demon out for blood. It was too animalistic, too brutal and wild and fierce. Even as the woman's knife sliced Kuwabara's bicep, he looked west, gaze drawn as another shriek echoed—and that's when he saw it.

A griffin, flying across the field on feathers red as blood, massive talons skimming the grasses. Its wings sprawled ten feet from tip to tip, their edges fletched in black, and its beak opened on another caw that pierced past all Kuwabara's fear, ringing bright and true in the hollow around his heart. Because even at this distance, even in a shape as unrecognizable as this one, Kuwabara knew the eyes staring back at him. Green as glittering emeralds. Intelligent and cunning and without a single shred of mercy.

 _Kurama_.

Somehow, impossibly, that was Kurama.

And as the griffin reached them, clawed forepaws seizing Hikari's chest and curved beak tearing open her throat, the _Alive_ counting dropping instantly to _75_ , Kuwabara knew something else, too.

He wasn't dying. Not here. Not now.

Because his red threads had worked—his friend had found him.

Fate had seen him through.

* * *

AN: This chapter's title is a play on the term 'pinned down' and the name of one of my favorite YouTubers/streamers, PauseUnpause. Y'all, I have _way_ too much fun with these chapter titles. (Because also, pinion feathers, ya? *nudge, nudge* *wink, wink* Pardon my poor griffin puns.)

Big heaps of thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter. I love all you folks: Shell1331, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, roseeyes, MissIdeophobia, and R. Firefly!

This fic has basically been on hiatus since February, but that is ending! New chapters to come very, very shortly!


	11. Rain Games

_**Chapter 11: Rain Games**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **72**_ Alive

The rain was still pouring down when Hibana emerged from the second floor twenty minutes after Yusuke had taken up vigil in the living room.

She stopped at the foot of the steps for a moment, a statue in the corner of Yusuke's vision, one hand still trailing down the wall as if using it for balance. Then, with a voice dry enough to absorb the entirety of the downpour pummeling the dirt beyond the shattered windows, she asked, "Is this what you call keeping watch?"

From his spot sprawled on the floor, his arms and legs flung wide like a starfish, Yusuke managed the world's least graceful shrug. "I was soaked from that dumb storm." He flipped a wrist in a gesture meant to encompass his spread-eagled form. "I'm air drying."

"If someone entered the house—"

"I'd have heard them. Take a peek around. Where do you think they're getting in without making enough noise to wake the dead?"

Hibana surveyed the room, her frown slowly melting into an exasperated sigh. "You still look like an idiot."

Yusuke grinned. "Why deny my true nature?"

She shook her head but padded over on silent feet and settled beside him, sitting cross-legged in the awkward triangle of space on his left, right between his extended arm and leg. Leaning past him, she picked through the supplies he'd gathered. Her hair swung, sweeping over her shoulders in wet strands, and he realized with a quickening of his pulse that she was still without her jacket, clad in only her damp shirt. The cotton clung to her sides in a way that drew his eye no matter how hard he fought to look away, especially as she rifled through the baggies of food above his head, her position aligning her chest a little too precisely over his eyes.

Grimacing, Yusuke jimmied his eyelids shut and welcomed the darkness, listening as Hibana snagged his backpack and started slotting gear inside it. "You should take some of the bandages," he said. "Pills, too. Doesn't make sense for me to carry them all."

"Nah, you keep them. Better they're in one place."

Yusuke cracked an eye back open. Putting all their supplies in his hands was stupid. If they got separated, she'd be down shit creek and he'd have all the paddles. "That's some impressively crappy logic. I don't want it all. Too much responsibility. Take—"

"No, Urameshi," Hibana said, and when he sucked in a breath so he could properly rant about how moronic she was being, she silenced him with a hand cupped over his mouth and a thumb leveraging his jaw closed. "Just be quiet, would you?"

She wasn't even looking at him, her free hand still carefully slotting bandages into his bag, but with her skin pressed to his lips, Yusuke found his tongue as uncooperative as if it had been turned to stone. An impulse he refused to obey urged him to nip at the soft flesh of her palm—or to… kiss it, maybe—but that was a special kind of absurd, and with a gargantuan effort, he rolled sideways, away from her, freeing himself from her touch and breaking his sightline with that clingy t-shirt of hers.

It was way, _way_ more distracting than plain cotton should ever be.

Silence stretched, spilling out to fill the cobwebbed corners of the room, awkward and heavy, broken only by the rustle of Hibana's packing. Just as he became certain he couldn't take it any longer, Hibana asked, "Figured out your second dog tag?"

Yusuke got the distinct sense the torture of the quiet hadn't even registered for her, and as he sat up and twisted to face her, he was careful to keep distance between them. He needed no more of her casual touches, no more of her offhand closeness.

He stuck out his arm and drew on the dog tag's power, watching a shimmering force field take shape across his skin. It glimmered in the poor lighting, highlighting the hairs pricking along his forearm. "A shield. That's is. Nothing exciting." With a sigh, he dissipated the barrier and let his arm flop back to his side.

"Actually, I'd say that's precisely what you—"

Rolling his eyes, Yusuke kicked out a foot, catching his toes against her elbow and shoving until she toppled askew. "I knew you'd say that. I freaking _knew_ it." Grumbling, he waved a hand at the food supplies she'd pulled from his bag. "Give me one of those."

"Such exquisite manners you've got."

"Oh, sorry. Didn't realize Hell required ladylike etiquette." Thrusting out a pinky on his extended hand, he flapped his arm again. "Pretty please."

Her eyes dancing with laughter that did truly obnoxious things to Yusuke's stomach, Hibana pushed the food his way, then turned to her own pack and withdrew the map she'd shown him the night prior. While he ripped into packages of dried fruit and jerky, she spread the parchment across the floor, studying the markings in the dim light. Chewing through a combined bite of apricot and beef, Yusuke held out his palm and summoned electricity.

He'd hoped it might brighten the room enough for Hibana to read by, but the sparks only jumped and sputtered, coursing across his skin in cords of blue-white heat, too unsteady to provide proper illumination. The crackle drew Hibana's attention, and she looked up, a smile playing at her lips. "Whether you approve of your shield or not, you can't be unhappy with that."

Irritated that his trick hadn't conjured the light she needed, Yusuke squelched the sparks and collapsed back to the floor. "I mean, I'm not complaining. Would kill for my Spirit Gun instead, though."

She arced an inky brow. "Is that your signature move?"

"Oh, don't act like 'Spirit Gun' is a dumb name when you're running around calling your weird explosive thing an 'X-KAIROS.'" He leveled the finger gun in question at her and mimed firing off a shot. "I could kick your ass if I had my actual powers."

"Mhmm."

"I could. For real."

She paused a moment, her gaze on his, and there was something in her expression, something in the faint upturn of her lips, that gave him pause—but then she bent over her map once more, and the feeling slithered away before he could grasp it. "I don't doubt that for a second, Urameshi."

"I'm actually a damn good fighter, you know."

"I do."

This time, it was Yusuke who hesitated. She did? She'd never acted as though she recognized him. Never once had she addressed him as Yusuke. But… maybe it had just taken her a bit to put the pieces together. Maybe she did know. "You do?"

"Didn't require more than a second in the field today to see how talented you are."

Oh.

Duh.

"Right." Shoving a hand through his rain-slicked hair, he stoutly ignored the whiny little voice inside him that wondered who Hibana could possibly be to not have heard of Urameshi Yusuke. Despite his pride's complaints, whether he was a stranger to her or not was irrelevant. His name hadn't saved him from the Grounds, and if he died here, it wouldn't matter if he was a former Spirit Detective or the ancestral son of Raizen or some kid off the street or Koenma himself. He'd still just be dead.

Who he was wouldn't be worth a damn at that point.

If Hibana noticed his turmoil, she gave no sign, and before long, she reached out a dirty hand to nudge his shoulder. "We'll stay here, at least through midnight—when the Circle will form—then make our plan for tomorrow."

Seizing the distraction she offered, Yusuke ran a thumb along the twin chains around his neck. "I've got two powers now—even if one _is_ cruddy—so we don't need the military outpost anymore, huh?" As soon as he said it, the truth of struck him like a bolt, and before Hibana could even answer, he was grinning, rolling onto his side to face her and propping himself up on his left elbow. "We can chase drops all day. Get our hands on an adrenaline shot."

"It's not that easy. And the outpost—"

"We were only headed to the island so I could get armed and survive this place." He tapped his second tag. "A shield covers that. You were going to say so yourself. So forget the military whatever. Let's collect drops instead. Trust me. It'll be worth it."

She hesitated, gaze on her map, teeth worrying her chapped bottom lip.

He snagged a hand around her ankle and squeezed. "Come on, Hibana. Trust me on this."

Her teeth bit down so hard the color bled from her lip, pink fleeing before white, but after a beat, she nodded, the gesture rough and robotic. "Alright. We'll try. But it might not be that simple, Urameshi. There's no telling where drops will fall. We may not find many."

"We don't need 'many.' We just need the right one."

She blew an exhale out through her nose, but folded the map and tucked it away, safe in an inner pouch of her bag. Then she tipped her chin up, angling it toward the window. "Rain's really coming down, huh?"

He snorted. "Is that where we're at? Discussing the weather like a pair of stogies in an old folks' home?"

"I'm just saying, it's pretty torrential. Could drown a person."

He shoved his brows up to his hairline.

The rain was loud, sure, and the air was clammy with moisture, and it might've been Yusuke's imagination or some trick of his dog tag, but he could've sworn he could _feel_ the charge of lightning in the air. Yet even still, this wasn't the worst rainstorm he'd ever been in. Not by a long shot. So why did Hibana's chin remain tilted toward the window, her eyes locked on something beyond the shattered pane? Flopping onto his back yet again, Yusuke followed the line of her gaze—and that's when he saw it.

Floating in the window's right corner, framed by jagged glass and chipped wood, loitered a compact silver body with a red light at its center, the tiny bulb blinking like the indicator of a recording camera

 _Yokai_.

"Dunno about that," Yusuke said, forcing his eyes to glide past the observer as if he hadn't noticed it at all. "See, a few years back, my buddy Kuwabara almost got his ass handed to him by an actual water monster. That would've been real drowning. A bunch of raindrops aren't so bad."

It was a shitty transition.

Yusuke knew it. Judging by the downward tilt of Hibana's lips, she knew it. Hell, even Yokai probably knew it. But it had been all Yusuke could come up with, his only way of signaling he understood the game they now needed to play.

Though hell if he couldn't have at least drawn on a fight he remembered properly. Kuwabara's original tussle with Seaman wasn't exactly a crystal-clear memory for Yusuke. He hadn't been there to see it, after all. Had Kuwabara come close to losing? Had he even been the one stuck inside Mitarai's territory? Who fucking knew. Certainly not Yusuke.

Worse, Kuwabara had gotten himself out of that mess with his Dimension Sword, and that was a piece of the tale Yusuke would not— _could not_ —share. Not if that same sword was to be their escape from the Grounds. The Gamerunner couldn't know why Yusuke wanted an adrenaline shot so badly.

Which meant it was time to backpedal.

"But that's a boring story," Yusuke said. "I've got a better one."

"Oh?"

"You bet." Lacing his hands behind his neck, Yusuke tilted his head just enough to bring Hibana clearly into view. "See, I met the guys all a bit separately, and it was only later that we all worked together. On this mission to defeat the Saint Beasts of Maze Castle."

"In the City of Ghosts and Apparitions," Hibana interrupted.

"You know it?"

"Nah, just made that name up."

Yusuke managed to choke down a laugh, but only just barely. "I should keep a tally of how often you're a raging bitch."

Her grin flashed, wicked and fleeting. "On with the story, you prick."

"Right so, it was a pretty straightforward mission. Enter the castle. Find the beasts. Fuck their shit up. But like I said, we'd never worked together before, and after the shit show we were, I'm shocked we ever teamed up again."

Hibana drew her knees to her chest and cradled her chin in the valley between them, her hair falling in inky waves over one shoulder. She said nothing as he continued, listening with a crinkle about her eyes that spoke of amusement. Reveling in the warmth of her undivided attention, Yusuke plowed into his retelling, losing himself in the memories, narrating the gory details with descriptions so spirited they would've left a regular girl retching.

Unsurprisingly, Hibana was unfazed.

He lingered over the bits that were most centered on his team—on the first laid stones in what would become the foundation of their brotherhood. The initial bickering squabbles between Kuwabara and Hiei. Their plight at the Gate of Betrayal. The perilous jaunt through the castle, slaying each beast in turn.

By the end, as he puttered into silence, half-lost in his own head, Hibana's smile had faded, her eyes oddly sober.

"What?" he demanded. "Did I bore you?"

The answering shake of her head tangled the waterfall of her hair, and she dragged her grimy nails through the locks, thrusting them behind her shoulder. "Nah. Just… well, you love them, huh? These friends of yours."

A knee-jerk denial sputtered to his lips. "No way. I love—"

The retort died as quick as it came, Yusuke nearly biting his tongue in his rush to shut up.

He'd been about to say Keiko, that he loved Keiko. And it wouldn't have been a lie. He did love Keiko. He'd _always_ love Keiko. But he wasn't _in love_ with Keiko. He hadn't been for a long, long time.

Which was exactly what Hibana meant.

Yusuke wasn't in love with his team. But he _did_ love them. Mostly. He loved Kuwabara's laughter and inability to control his volume level. He loved Kurama's dry wit and affinity for pranks so cunning his victim didn't even realize they'd been tricked. He loved Hiei's steadfast loyalty and dogged insistence on telling shit like it was, no matter how crappy his timing.

They were his family. The one constant in his weird freakstorm of a life. So what if he loved them? Was that such a big fucking deal?

"What's your point?"

"It was just an observation, Urameshi. Nothing to get defensive about."

Normally, he'd call that bullshit, declare a spade a spade and insist she own up to the truth, but her voice was so quiet, so earnest and unguarded, that his usual bite wouldn't come. Outside, a fork of lightning zigged across the horizon, and a boom of thunder followed, cracking across the fields. In the lull after, as the rain's drumming settled into the quiet aftermath of the thunderclap, he cleared his throat. "What about you? Got friends waiting for you to get out of here?"

It was as if he'd shot her.

The life went from her expression, her eyes darkening to shards of black ice, the final traces of her smile evaporating. She didn't frown, didn't glare, but he saw nothing of the girl he was beginning to know in the stony mask staring back at him. Not a shred of her remained.

Cutting her gaze to the window, she ignored his question and announced, "Yokai's gone," then grabbed a fistful of her bag and shoved upright, hauling the backpack onto her shoulder. "Let's go upstairs. You take watch until midnight and wake me so we can see where the Circle manifests. Then we'll switch." As if that was all it took to end their conversation, she turned on her heel, fluid as a prowling cat, and strode for the stairs.

What the hell had he done wrong?

Yusuke couldn't figure it out. Couldn't make sense of why asking about friends would turn her into a ghost of herself. All he knew was that he wasn't ready for her to go. He didn't want to be done here. Not yet. Not when he'd so clearly screwed up.

Thoughtlessly, he lunged after her, scrambling on his hands and knees to swipe at her wrist. "Hibana, wait."

Under his touch, she froze, so still he wasn't even sure she drew breath, but now that he had her, he had no idea what to say, and before he could fumble up something to break the taut silence, she puttered back into motion. With firm, calloused fingers, she pried her wrist free of his grip and then, without a word more—without even a look back at him—disappeared up the steps.

Yusuke stood still a moment longer, his hand flexing in and out of a fist. Eventually, he forced his feet to part from the floor, one trudging stride after another drawing him up the staircase after her, leaving the barricaded first story to protect them.

Hibana had ducked not left, into the room where she'd mourned her kills, but right, into the poorly furnished bedroom opposite it. Inside its musty depths, she set her bag against the wall and smoothed out the canvas, then lay down and slid up to use the backpack like a pillow. Her jacket remained absent, probably still drying in the room across the landing, and as Yusuke settled a few feet away, propping himself against the chipped plaster, he grew distinctly aware of a draft blowing across the room.

It carried rain inside, splattering droplets over the scuffed floor, and tendrils of the breeze blew stray hair across his forehead. In minutes, the cold had wormed beneath the thin layer of his shirt, chilling his still clammy skin, and though the room was dark, illuminated only by the weak light filtered through the storm clouds, he didn't miss the telltale shake of a shiver as one wracked through Hibana. At first, he ignored it, reminding himself that she'd pushed him away downstairs, bricking up a wall between them she clearly didn't want broken down, but after the third tremor rattled through her, he couldn't feign ignorance any longer.

"Hibana," he whispered.

She cracked open an eye. "What, Urameshi?"

 _Yusuke_ , he wanted to say. _Call me Yusuke_.

Instead, he lifted an arm, beckoning her with one hand. "Come here. Stupid for us to spend the night freezing."

She made no effort to move.

"Two people means twice as much body heat," he said and patted his thigh. "It's basic science or something. Point is: I'm cold. You're cold. And I don't bite. So come on." Another pat of his leg. "Let's not be complete idiots."

For a second, he thought she was going to blow him off, leave him sitting there alone, both of them freezing in the dark—but then she pushed her bag toward him and scooted after it. Wordlessly, she lay her head atop his thigh, one hand sliding beneath his quad. She pressed her back to the wall, her pack tucked into the curve of her stomach as she drew up her knees.

He said nothing as she settled, but his traitorous hand took on a life of its own. Without his permission, it swept over her hair, tucking strands out of her eyes before gliding along the curve of her shoulder. It traced lower, rubbing circles into her back and massaging down her spine. Warming her.

Supposedly.

Once it started, he found he couldn't stop it. Didn't want to, really. Not as Hibana's breath grew steady. Nor as the tension slid from her back. By the time sleep claimed her in full, he thought he might know every inch of her left shoulder by touch alone, every ridge of her upper spine by nothing more than feel. But as one silent minute bled into the next, Yusuke willed his muscles to stone, then let his hand fall lifeless to the floor.

He canted his head back against the wall and stared up at the distant ceiling, trying to make out shapes through the darkness. His pulse thrummed unsteadily in his temples, the long hours of the day tearing away pieces of him until all that remained was his ragged, busted up heart.

But his exhaustion could stuff it, for all Yusuke cared. He'd promised to take watch. So take watch he would.

In a few hours, the first Circle would appear. Hibana needed rest before then. He did, too. Because he already knew—once the Circle began to close, the Grounds would only get worse.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **Squad**_ : Youko, Kuwabara

 _ **6**_ Kills

 _ **72**_ Alive

Kurama returned to himself in a shifting of flesh and morphing of muscle that left his body aching for phantom limbs, for the wings that had retracted into his spine and the talons that had shrunk down to measly human nails. Even after the metamorphosis finished, his nerve endings still whispered of wind rustling through his feathers, and his jaw felt too tight, too compressed, a mere specter of the formidable might that had been his beak.

Blood pooled at his feet, gathering in pockets of churned mud, rainwater turning it mauve in the darkness. The rain slicked every inch of him, dripping along the curve of his ear and sluicing off the bridge of his nose, trailing cold fingers down his spine and squelching between his toes.

Dully, Kurama's thoughts took shape, coalescing into meaningful understanding, deciphering the sensory input that had overwhelmed him. Changing into the griffin hadn't been like shifting into Youko or returning to Shuichi. During those transformations—even during that first unplanned manipulation under the sway of the Idunn Box—his mind remained his own. He was still Kurama, still the blended soul he'd been for the last quarter century. But as the griffin… He had been something else. Something _other_. Something animal and wild and raging, flooded with the territorial need to protect a member of his pack. To protect Kuwabara.

 _Kuwabara_.

The human stood before Kurama now, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, soaked to the bone, a bruise already spreading like blue-black oil across his cheek. But slowly, as if it had snuck up on him, a grin broke across Kuwabara's lips, and in a bounding step, he closed the gap between them.

Massive arms wrapped around Kurama, crushing him to a broad chest as Kuwabara clenched a fist in the stretch of shirt between Kurama's shoulder blades, his other forearm hooking tight around his ribs. Pants burst within Kuwabara's lungs, his terrified flight from the building catching up to him, and his every breath rattled through Kurama, as urgent as the flustered pounding of Kurama's heart.

Kurama couldn't be sure how long they stood there, the rain falling in sheets, thunder booming in the distance. Seconds? Minutes? Perhaps it was weak-willed human fancy that kept him stationary or perhaps the vestiges of his transformation still cobwebbing his mind—or maybe it was simply relief, profound and staggering.

Despite the terrible odds, he'd tracked Kuwabara. Reached him in time to save his life.

If not for Kurama, Kuwabara would have died here, torn apart under cruel hands. Instead, Kurama had claimed four additional victims—four more lives to stack upon his tally. More lifeblood to slick his hands.

It was a price he'd pay a million times over. And a million times more if that's what it took to reunite with Hiei and Yusuke as well.

No death score could outweigh the value of his team. No eventual residence in Spirit World's worst depths could sway him. Not from this. Not from his allies. His friends.

Arms still locked tight, his breath blowing hot against Kurama's ear, Kuwabara said, "Color me crazy, but last I knew, your shapeshifting was only of the foxy variety. What the hell was that just now?"

Huffing out a soft laugh, Kurama eased back. His hand rose to his throat, pulling the dog tag's chain free of his soaked shirt. "Powers on this island appear to come from these tags."

Kuwabara's brow scrunched. "How'd you work that out?"

"Happenstance and an overly large shake of dumb luck."

"Yeah right." Kuwabara rocked back on his heels, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops. Rainwater gathered along the heavy line of his brow and streamed downward at the corners of his eyes as if his face possessed its own gutter system. "You haven't done a dumb thing in your life."

"While the vote of confidence is appreciated," Kurama said, "it was my poor decision making that split us up in the lab. Shortly thereafter, I was captured, as were you and presumably Hiei and Yusuke. If that doesn't qualify as unwise, you may want to recalibrate your meter."

"Whatever," Kuwabara said, flapping a hand to dismiss Kurama's logic. "Point is: you can turn into a fucking _griffin_ , and you saved my ass, and now we're together—one half of the team." He thrust a finger solidly into Kurama chest. "So if that was all dumb luck, then hell yes, bring it on. We need more, more, more."

It took a beat for Kurama to comprehend the absurdity of the moment unfolding around him. The rain pouring down. The bodies cooling at their feet. The exposure of this open field. The _6_ emblazoned on his vision. The continued relief in his system. The utter and complete lack of alarm.

Kuwabara had that effect on him. An odd, disarming ability to strip away the gravity of a moment and hone in on hope and possibility.

So when a smile curled at the corner of Kurama's lips, he didn't resist it. "Dumb luck guided me to a tag," he said, allowing the seeds of that smile to blossom into a grin, "but it was the red strings of fate that saved your life. Or rather—red scraps of cloth."

For a second, Kuwabara said nothing, seemingly struck silent by the success of his breadcrumb trail, but then he threw back his head, a laugh rising up from his belly that could be classified as nothing less than a guffaw. It shook through him, spilling raindrops from his shoulders in a cascade. "You're kidding," he crowed. "Tell me you're kidding."

"No word of a lie."

With a whoop, Kuwabara punched a fist toward the sky. "You're telling that to Hiei and Yusuke when we find them, you hear me? Yusuke, especially. That punk's been mocking me for years, but look where the red string got me now!"

Yes, look, indeed.

Here. In this bloody battleground. Five minutes removed from a brush with death that, while perhaps not the closest of Kuwabara's life, certainly ranked in the top five. Had he not lived a life so inhumanly dangerous, it would've far and away beaten any risk he could've faced in Sarayashiki.

That was the path fate had put him on. If one were to _believe_ in fate, that is. And Kurama… He had never been much of a believer.

But he said none of that now. "I'll tell them. Swear it."

"Good." A flash of lightning preceded a fresh boom of thunder, and as Kuwabara straightened up, his expression sobered. "Though we have to find them first, huh?"

"So it seems."

Kuwabara patted his shoulder, apparently confirming the presence of his bag, its straps still snug over his arms. "I was leaving before…" His gaze flitted to the bodies lying in the muck, then jerked away. "Figure we might as well stick that. Keep heading west, maybe."

"Perhaps we camp here a few hours longer," Kurama said. Kuwabara strategy was as sound as any, but fatigue weighed like stones upon Kurama's limbs. He needed rest—a bout of sleep in which he need not keep one eye open. But before that, one task remained at hand. "Though first—one of the women was using energy attacks. She must've had a dog tag."

Kurama could tell when his implication sunk home by the gradual draining of color from Kuwabara's cheeks. "Look, I know they're not buried, so it's not properly grave digging, but looting a bunch of corpses—"

"Will save our lives," Kurama finished for him. He turned to survey the women, trying to discern which of the muddy, bloodstained bodies was the one they needed. "Now, let's be quick. The storm provides good cover. We may not hear foes approaching."

Kuwabara remained rooted in place a breath longer, his face still bloodless—still sick at the sacrilege of Kurama's suggestion—but when Kurama stooped to roll the nearest corpse onto its back, he lurched into action. His legs took him stumbling away, up onto the slight rise of a hill, his boots squelching through the mud. With a wretched groan, he bent over, hands on his knees, body heaving as it expunged its horror into the sodden grass.

Kurama did him the service of pretending not to notice. He kept his eyes averted, kept his hands picking over the dead.

Until he found it. The tag.

It was worth the mud beneath his nails and the blood in the creases of his fingers. It was worth Kuwabara retching in the bushes. It was worth a mark against his soul.

A bettered shot at survival was worth anything.

A million times over.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **70**_ Alive

It had to be nearing midnight when Hibana shifted in her sleep, her head sliding off Yusuke's thigh as she curled up tighter, hugging her bag to her chest. He held still for a heartbeat, waiting until her breath evened out again, then stretched his legs, wincing as blood rushed back in a flood of pins and needles. Careful not to disturb her, he found his feet, wobbly at first on his half-numb limbs. He needed to move, needed to loosen up muscles that had gone stiff after so many hours of stillness, but he wouldn't go far—no further, even, than the room across the landing.

The rain had stopped a while back, and the moon had finally broken through the clouds. Its watery light guided Yusuke's steps across the rotting floorboards, keeping his feet steady as he ducked into the opposite bedroom as quietly as any powerless human could ever manage.

Without thinking, he scanned for the numbers Hibana had carved into the wall, hoping to find _051_ —the identifier of the woman whose throat he'd slit. But there was nothing to see. No numbers. No digits etched in the plaster.

Confused, he stepped closer, dodging around a discarded mattress as he went. Even inches from the wall, he found nothing. Only dirty, featureless paint and a lone headboard, the rest of its frame scattered in pieces across the room.

It made no sense. He'd seen the carvings for himself.

They had to be here.

Burying a hand in his hair, he paced. His foot caught on a discarded shirt, and he looked down, spotting a trail tracked through the dust, highlighted in the moon's glow.

Someone—Hibana, obviously—had moved the headboard, shoving it three feet down the wall.

Frowning, Yusuke grabbed hold of the wood and hefted it upright with more difficulty than a stupid slab of cheap plywood should've required. Even in his weakened state, he managed to lay it down without commotion, and as he straightened up, dusting off his palms, he discovered those painstakingly carved numbers, right where he'd last seen them.

 _ **017**_

 _ **051**_

 _ **068**_

And then, beside them, a number he _hadn't_ seen before. One he couldn't make sense of. One that consisted of only two digits, not three.

 _ **48**_

Another of Hibana's secrets. Another mystery. Another riddle.

Would her puzzles ever cease?

* * *

AN: I'M BACK!

Endless heaps of apologies for how long this story was put on hold—and with as little warning as I provided. To make a very long story short, I spent the last few months putting a wrap on BBL and completing a massive round of revision on a novel, but at long, long last, TUG has my focus again! And thank goodness, too, because I missed this story heaps.

I hope this was a compelling return chapter. I know it wasn't the most action packed, but after the upheaval of the last few chapters, the boys were in need of some downtime. I'm incredibly excited for material to come in the next five or so chapters (as in, that material is what compelled me to write this whole story), so have no fear—TUG isn't going back on hiatus any time soon (or at all, if I have anything to say about it).

Heaps of thanks to you wonderful souls who reviewed in the time since my last post: Laina Inverse, MissIdeophobia, roseeyes, Guest, KyoHana, starsxwonder, Shell1331, Kara Evans, and FireDancerNix.

(P.S. Note that the kill count dropped in Yusuke's last scene without being explicitly mentioned. As the boys grow more used to deaths happening, I won't address every single kill as it happens.)


	12. The Circle

_**Chapter 12: The Circle**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **70**_ Alive

When the rain at last petered out, its last drops pattering against the roof, Yusuke drifted to one of the windows in the room where Hibana slept. Moth-bitten curtains obscured the foggy windowpane, and he drew back the cloth to peer into the dark. If they'd had a light on, he wouldn't have risked the exposure, knowing even just a sliver of illumination would've been a beacon to any enemies roving the fields ahead, but as it was, his eyes had grown accustomed to a darkness so complete that even the moon's watery glow felt blinding.

Squinting into that silver light, he judged it must be nearly midnight. Time for the first Circle to form. And time to wake Hibana.

Finally.

The soft whisper of her breath had wormed beneath Yusuke's skin, irritating his nerves as he paced the narrow confines of their hideout. More than once, he'd considered retreating downstairs to fresher air and wider spaces—somewhere he could get his head on straight.

But he hadn't.

He'd promised Hibana he'd keep watch, and separating from her, no matter how inconsequentially, put them both at risk. The barricades he'd constructed at every entrance of the house would serve as protection enough. He didn't need to be downstairs with them.

Still, it was a relief to lope over to her, seize her shoulder, and jostle her awake. He grinned at her as she blinked blearily into wakefulness, a yawn squirming past her lips before she could raise a hand to cover it. "Happy midnight," he drawled, rocking back on his heels.

She rubbed her eyes as she pushed herself upright, disentangling from her bag. A wince rippled through her, and she reached up to massage the crook of her neck, grimacing as her fingers worked the muscle. "Rain stopped?"

"Sure did." He made no mention of how the clouds had scuttled away too quickly to be natural. At this point, he didn't need one of her snarky jibes to remind him that _nothing_ in the Grounds was as nature meant it to be. The clouds—and the entire storm, really—had simply been a toy to keep the Gamerunner occupied. When he was bored of his playthings, they disappeared. Easy as that.

"Has the Circle manifested?"

Yusuke glanced at the window, but the curtain had fallen back into place, and he couldn't see beyond it. "Not sure what I'm looking for exactly, but doesn't seem that way."

"You'd know," Hibana said. "There'd be no missing it."

"Yeah? Well, what it's like then?"

Another yawn interrupted her answer. By the time it had passed, she'd dug into her bag, growing distracted with drawing out her map. Wordlessly, she spread the canvas across the floor and beckoned Yusuke closer.

He dropped down beside her and squinted at the parchment. In the dim light, he couldn't make out much, but without requiring prompting, Hibana traced the route they'd traveled that day, her finger drawing a zagging line along the coast, then diverting inland to the yellow square that represented the building they'd claimed as their own. "We're here. Halfway to the eastern bridge to the smaller island—"

"Which we don't care about anymore."

"For now," she amended. "But to keep our options open, we still want the Circle to center itself toward the southeast of the Grounds. The more westward it forms, the worse off we are. The last thing we want is to be stuck outrunning a shrinking border instead of hunting drops."

"Sure, sure. Makes sense."

Hibana paused a moment, chewing absently at the corner of her thumb nail as she puzzled over the map. Then she said, "There will be two circles. The external circle—the blue one—is _the_ Circle. That's the one we need to keep inside of. The white one shows where the blue will shrink down to. Once it closes completely, the white ring will become blue, and the next white circle with appear somewhere inside the first—not necessarily centered."

Infected with her exhaustion, Yusuke turned his face into his shoulder to stifle a yawn. "Right," he mumbled against his shirt. "You've said all this before."

"It bears repeating, Urameshi. It's pivotal you understand the threat we're facing."

"Got it. Understood. Internalized. Whatever." He lifted his head and shot her his most brazen smirk. "I can outrun a dumb Circle. I'm not scared."

"And if I die? What then? If I haven't taught you what I know, do you think you'll find your friends without me?" Hibana spoke without looking at him, gaze still honed on the map, tracking its finer details, and her tone betrayed nothing, offering no hint that she feared death. It was like she… _didn't_. As if she didn't give two flying shits whether she lived or died in this hellpit.

"You're not going to die," he snapped. "I won't either. And the guys definitely won't, because we're going to find them and get the fuck out of here and that's the end of it, Hibana. I don't let my friends die on me—and whether you like it or not, I count you as one of my allies now. So stop being morbid. Got it?"

"Friends?" she asked, still not meeting his eyes. "Or allies?"

"Does it matter?"

She sighed, her breath blowing dust motes up from the floor. It took all Yusuke's will not to sneeze as they tickled his nose. "Just… humor me, okay?" she asked. "For the next hour, let me worry and fret and offer you help you don't want. Then I'll take watch, and when you wake, I'll do what you ask. We'll chase drops, we'll hunt down your team, and we won't strategize beyond that."

"That's not what I meant. I just—"

"Urameshi," she murmured, so softly he shut up just to catch the last syllable of his name on her tongue.

"Huh?"

"The Circle's forming."

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **3**_ Kills

 _ **70**_ Alive

In the hours after sundown, Hiei notched two additional kills in his belt.

Both had slicked his machete with blood, but only one had fought back. A piece of him—the tiny sliver of his soul untarnished by the annals of his life—detested what he had done, how he'd sliced the neck of a sleeping woman without offering her a shot at self-defense. But the rest of him—the cold, calculating intelligence that had seen him through so many years on the brink of death—knew she had only herself to blame. Had she wanted to survive, she shouldn't have left herself so vulnerable. She should've found proper safety, not the hovel of a shelter she'd chosen.

Her death was a weight she'd carry with her into the grave.

It wasn't Hiei's burden to bear.

His other victim had been a young man running through a field, and in truth, he'd found Hiei rather than the other way around. But unlike Hiei, the boy hadn't been ready, hadn't been looking for a fight, and Hiei had cut him down in heartbeats. He'd stayed with the corpse long enough to close its eyelids after the body had gone still, then roved further west.

Three fights. Three kills.

A perfect win-rate.

Always, he continued his trek toward the horizon, dogged and unrelenting. Without the sunset to guide him and with the pounding rain obscuring the moon, he'd been unable to map his route via the sky, but he trusted his gut and the vestiges of his senses to keep his path true.

He didn't know what waited to the west. Didn't care, either. All that mattered was that it was new terrain to cover, new ground to hunt in. If he traveled far enough and ranged wide enough, he might eventually stumble upon the tracks of his team. If not, at least he'd have trimmed their competition, witling down their opponents' numbers. In both instances, he'd have pushed their odds closer to victory.

Under foot, the hills grew steeper and more frequent until it seemed as though he were always on a slope, his ankles and knees and muscles working overtime to offset the incline. The torrential rain churned the dirt to mud, and one particularly graceless skid down a hillside resulted in sludge sliding into his boots and squelching between his toes.

 _Fuck_ —he hated this clumsy body.

When the rain finally ceased and the clouds broke enough for Hiei to spot the moon, it was nearly midnight. The silver disc hung overhead, its face pocked with darkness, and as a last drop of rain splattered upon Hiei's cheekbone, he paused to gather his wits, squinting at the barely visible stars.

It was only because he'd stopped that he saw it—the ripple of blue flaring across the sky, spreading like a wave, unnatural and strange.

It arced downward in an unfurling dome, cascading like electricity turned to water. Though it had originated somewhere to the east rather than directly overhead, in seconds, the light passed above Hiei and carried on to the west, sinking closer and closer to the ground with his every breath.

The sparking ripples reminded him of a prison he'd experienced long ago—of the Enchanted Barrier the demoness Ruka had cast to trap him and the Masked Fighter within her false medical tent during the Dark Tournament. But this energy was grander than anything that weakling could've conjured, vast on a scale he could barely comprehend.

Swiveling to the east, he confirmed the blue light stretched as far as he could see, sloping down, down, down until he lost it behind the tree line or beyond rolling hills. Same to the north. And the south.

Its western edge was closest to him, and slowly, his right hand curled over the hilt of his machete, Hiei resumed his trek toward it, his weakened senses stretched to their fullest as he slunk down one hill and crested the next. On and on. Until he reached a final ridge and a field sprawled before him.

The dome bordered its far edge, the blue light's lip extending all the way to the dirt, where it became lost among the weeds. He sensed the pulse of it in the air, an otherworldly crackle, not quite like demon or spirit energy but not _unlike_ them either.

Tugging his machete free of the makeshift sheath he'd fashioned at his waist, Hiei darted across the field. Exposed, open land encircled him on all sides, somehow leaving him feeling more trapped than he'd have felt in the undergrowth of a forest. Since he'd killed the lizard demon, he'd been careful with his footsteps, certain he left no trace behind, but a trail wouldn't matter when he was standing out where anyone might spot him. Only the shoddy cover of the clouds scuttling across the moon kept him remotely hidden—and that was piss poor protection indeed.

But he had to see the dome up close, had to determine what new foe he was facing.

He raced for a bush close to the blue energy and ducked within it, using the foliage to shroud his back. Crouched there in the dirt, the barrier was only an outstretched arm away.

Eyes narrowed, teeth bared in a silent snarl, Hiei extended his machete.

The blade passed through unhindered. Unaffected. Nothing about its surface changed. Rust still sullied the steel. The edge remained dull. A fleck of dried blood upon the tip did not burn away to ash.

So then, the blue was not a barrier. It _was_ _n't_ like the machinations of the enchantress Ruka.

But in that case, what in the name of Demon World's worse pits could it be?

Hiei had to know. Had to test.

Bracing himself, he held out a hand, stretched his fingers until they kissed the blue, then pushed them beyond it.

At once, his skin blistered.

Welts opened across his fingertips, spreading up his digits like a flameless burn. Hiei hissed and yanked back his arm, but the damage was already done, and it didn't repair itself as he staggered deeper into the bush, putting distance between himself and the scorching wall. This was no Enchanted Barrier, and though he couldn't be sure _what_ it was, he knew one thing. The most important thing.

This dome—the Blue—was a deadlier foe than any fighter he'd find in this battleground.

But it was also a tool, an aid in his hunt.

Grinning with wicked thrill, he flexed his blistered fingers, turned south—and resumed his prowl.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **70**_ Alive

"It's… literally just a circle." Yusuke frowned at the map, underwhelmed to the point of irritation by the thin blue line that had taken shape around the islands. It wasn't much to look at—and it sure as hell didn't seem like a threat worthy of the gravity Hibana had placed on it.

"On the map, yeah," Hibana said. "But not if we encountered it out there." A thrust of her chin indicated the darkened landscape beyond the window. "We're damn lucky it's cropped up where it has."

Yusuke glanced again at the ring. Just as Hibana had hoped it would, the Circle sat centered above the Grounds' southeastern region, but it was massive, encompassing the vast majority of both islands, and for a second, he didn't get why she'd been so scared about losing access to the military outpost. Other than the most western stretch of the larger island, the entire Grounds remained in play.

But then he noticed the white circle within the blue border, and her fears began to make sense.

The white circle was small, only two thirds the size of the blue. Rather than falling in the middle of the larger ring, it had appeared toward the south and east, its westernmost edge clipping the small isle in half. Though the military base remained intact, fully within the circle's bounds, it had been a close call. If Yusuke hadn't secured a second tag, their window to reach the outpost would've been narrow.

Now, it didn't matter.

"Plenty of ground to chase drops," he said.

She nodded, but didn't look up, still studying the map from beneath dark brows. The hairs above her right eye were mussed, sticking out in a jagged array, and without really thinking about it, Yusuke reached up to smooth her eyebrow flat. Hibana froze beneath his touch, and as his hand fell back to his lap, she cleared her throat roughly to announce, "We can work with this safe zone."

He curled both his hands into fists and pressed his knuckles together— _hard_. "So we can't predict where the drones might appear, huh?"

"No."

"And there's no guessing how many might show?"

"As I've said before, no."

He squirmed his toes inside his boots, aching to fidget but unable to trust his hands not to betray him again. He wouldn't touch her. Not when she reacted like _that_. "What's our plan for tomorrow, then?"

"Either we roam—and risk running into more opponents than we'd like. Or we find a high vantage point where we can wait for luck to strike—and, in the process, risk getting cornered."

Sitting in the quiet with her for any longer than absolutely necessary would probably drive Yusuke straight into the loony bin, so he didn't hesitate before saying, "Roaming it is. Waiting around for trouble to find us seems like a good way to get ourselves killed."

To his surprise, she hummed agreement. "Good. Staying still makes me restless." Stretching her arms above her head, she laced her hands and arched her back, wincing as her muscles protested. "I'm so sick of sleeping on the floor."

He chuckled. "At least we're not at ground level tonight. That beach yesterday must've been infested with mites or some other buggy bastard, because I swear, I have a dozen bites."

"Couldn't get your beauty rest, princess?"

Yusuke flipped Hibana off, and a grin flashed like lightning across her features, electric despite the darkness. Dragging his gaze away, Yusuke rubbed a thumb alone his jawline and studied the map again. "Think my team is inside the Circle?"

"Probably." A shrug rolled through her body like a ripple through water. "Unless they started all the way to the west, they're likely somewhere more central. Even if they aren't though, the first Circle isn't so bad. It'd hurt like a bitch, but you could survive outside it. For two hour or three hours even. Should be plenty of time to run to safety."

A frown knotted his brow. "The Circle gets worse?"

Nodding, Hibana drew her knees up to her chest. "Each time it resets, its damage output grows, and it moves faster, too. This first Circle will start to close at noon, but it won't reach the white inner circle until midnight. It'll take twelve hours on the dot. But the second Circle will start to shrink after eight hours and reach the white after another eight. From there, the windows will just grow shorter and shorter."

"Is it obvious that you're in the Blue?"

"Yeah. The energy distorts the air. Blisters your skin, too, so they'd know even if they had their heads up their own asses."

Despite the decidedly not funny concept of burning skin, Yusuke couldn't manage to swallow down a laugh. He leveled an accusing finger her way. "You keep saying I'm not taking this shit seriously enough, but then you say crap like _that_ , and… I'm not sure you're oh so serious either."

"Ah, so you want a joke-free environment? Because I can give you a joke-free environment." The grin wiped from her face, her lips going flat and her eyebrows crooking downward, though the twinkle didn't leave her dark irises. "Just say the word, Urameshi, and the No Fun Zone can go into full effect."

"Wait a sec." He leaned forward, bracing his elbows atop his criss-crossed legs. "You're telling me I've had jokester Hibana on my hands this whole time? Did I miss all your best zingers? Are they just too witty for my big, dumb head?"

Laugh lines crinkled around the corner of her eyes. For a beat, she simply held his gaze, wordless, her laughter fading into an unreadable scrutiny that made him squirm inside his own skin, but eventually, she broke the spell, murmuring, "You know… you're not what I was expecting, Urameshi."

He cocked his head. "Because I'm not a shrapnel-shredded corpse?"

That earned him an outright laugh, one of her quick, huffing puffs of breath, so quiet it seemed to slip out without her noticing. "For starters."

"Glad to hear it. Predictably is for twerps." He knocked a closed fist against his chest. "As we both know, Urameshi is no twerp."

"No," she agreed, "he isn't. Just a stubborn ass."

Pitching his voice low, Yusuke rocked another inch forward. "You say that like I don't wear my honorary badge with pride."

Laughing, Hibana shook her head. "You've detoured us entirely off topic."

True. She'd been telling him about the Blue—confirming whether the guys were likely to be out there, dying somewhere in the Grounds, burning up outside the Circle. Once he pictured it, once his mind conjured up an image of Kuwabara blistered to death in the middle of some screwed up field, it wasn't hard to drag his focus back to the map. "If they were in it, would they see it, too? The Blue, I mean."

She nodded. "If you're beyond it, the whole world tints blue. If your friends are past the Circle, they should be able to work out how to save themselves. Unless they're idiots, that is."

Instinct had a joke about Kuwabara being a dumbass rising on Yusuke's tongue, but as he stared down at the map and the fragile line of the Circle, the insult refused to take shape. "Nah," he said slowly. "If any of us are an idiot, it's me. Not them." It was the truth, not just a lie to ease the knotted uncertainty in his chest. "They'll survive. At least this round."

"Others won't." Not meeting his eye, she folded up the map and slid it deep into her bag. "The Circle might get them, or it might drive them into other groups fleeing the Blue. Overnight, we might see a drop in the number of living fighters, and I'm certain we will once the Circle starts to close."

Quietly, she moved to the wall and propped her back against it, then raised a beckoning hand. He frowned at her a second, confused, but then she laughed and patted her thigh. "A certain asshole was quite insistent that two bodies provide better body heat than only one, so come on."

He was tempted to remind her they weren't wet anymore, that their clothes were wrinkled but dry, that storm winds no longer swirled through the windows—but he didn't. He only hauled himself over to her and let her guide his head to her lap.

His eyes fell shut as her fingers delved into his hair, mimicking the tendrils of sleep twining in lazy coils around him. The gel that usually tamed his unruly mane had given up the ghost under the rainstorm's deluge, and her nails parted the strands with ease, gliding along his scalp. He thought he might've hummed contentedly in the moments before sleep claimed him, though he had enough wits about him to hope the sensation of a purr had caught in his chest, lodged in the cavity around his heart.

Either way, when exhaustion gave way to the black unconsciousness, her name sat on his tongue—as tenuous as a prayer.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **Squad**_ : Kuwabara, Youko

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **70**_ Alive

After the sky buttoned up its innards and the downpour ceased, Kuwabara woke Kurama, and they readied to travel. He'd prepped two more MREs in the minutes before stirring Kurama from sleep, and together, they scarfed the pouches down, then left the remains to rot in the kitchen sink.

Kurama looked better for having rested, his cheeks a little less pale, his eyes a little less wild, but he still wasn't the man Kuwabara was used to. He was too sharp around the edges, bristling at every whistle of wind through the battered house, grasping at a dagger each time a floorboard creaked beneath Kuwabara's boots. He was on edge. Itching for a fight. Or prepared for one, at least.

And at his insistence, Kuwabara was now armed with a dog tag of his own.

If Kuwabara had understood Kurama right, the charm would gift Kuwabara the same powers Hikari had possessed. Energy coated fists, at worst. Energy projectiles, at best. More than he'd had before, either way.

The cold metal at the hollow his throat made his skin crawl.

But all the same, as Kurama eased open the front door and surveyed the land beyond, Kuwabara kept the chain around his neck. Stealing from the dead gave him the heebie jeebies, but if it kept him alive, then Kurama had done the right thing.

Hadn't he?

"Bodies are gone." Kurama's murmur broke the quiet, and Kuwabara reached for his serrated knife as he trailed Kurama into the yard. Sure enough, the four corpses had disappeared. Churned mud proved the fight had happened, but the rest of the scene—the shredded cadavers and spilled intestines—had vanished.

"Creepy."

"Agreed."

Rubbing his hands over his elbows to fight off a fresh bout of gooseflesh, Kuwabara glanced up at the sky. Stars glimmered across its dark canvas, shining like tiny pinpricks that refused to grow lost amongst the void.

And then…

Blue light. Spilling eastward. Tumbling toward the ground.

"Kurama."

The fox had bent over their muddy tracks, peering at the roiled dirt as if he might crack open the mystery of the evaporated bodies, but at Kuwabara's voice, he glanced up. "Yes?"

"Dunno about yours, but my instincts have gone pretty darn quiet since I woke up here. Don't need them, though, to know _that_ —" he pointed at the blue dome "—looks bad. Really bad."

Kurama's gaze flitted to the sky. His forehead furrowed, his brows arching toward one another. "It certainly doesn't look optimal, does it?"

Duh. That's what Kuwabara had said, after all. But he held his tongue, stifling his rebuttal. Kurama's tone brooked a nervousness in him that Kuwabara didn't want to examine too closely, and for a second, he regretted pointing out the light to begin with. Anything that agitated Kurama that much was enough to give Kuwabara nightmares for a year—easy.

He swallowed roughly. "So what do we do?"

"Stick to our strategy until its flaws become evident. Then we adjust. As fast as we need to."

Which meant they were headed west. Just as they'd planned.

Kuwabara just hoped they wouldn't regret it.

* * *

AN: The Blue! The Circle! I'm pumped that we've finally hit the point where I can enter the true time bomb of this story. The _Alive_ counter has represented the ticking clock so far, but the Circle takes that to a whole new level, and I'm very excited!

I forgot to mention last week, but I'll be updating this story every other Saturday from here on out (rather than Fridays). If I complete the fic ahead of schedule, I'll probably bump it to weekly postings, but no idea if that'll happen or not at this point.

Finally, I'll post a map of the boys' last known locations on my tumblr (hereafteryyh) for this chapter. Sorry I didn't get one up last week. I've got to get myself back into the regular swing of things!

Huge heap of thanks to everyone who so kindly welcomed this story back from its impromptu hiatus. You are all the very best souls. Much love to: MissIdeophobia, Hyphen, KyoHana, Lady Hummingbird, Shell1331, Laina Inverse, Sky65, MusicOfMadness, and PondRiverWilliams! (Also, huge love to Starsxwonder for their delightful love on tumblr.)


	13. Gather Them Drops

_**Chapter 13: Gather Them Drops**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **68**_ Alive

Prowling the fields proved far less riveting than Yusuke had anticipated.

For one thing, not even Hibana's eagle eyes spotted signs of life in the low-lying hills northwest of Lipovka. If their enemies stalked the land, they did so without leaving tracks, and Yusuke couldn't decide if he was glad for it, because that meant no further lives for him or Hibana to stain across their souls, or if he hated it, because their opponents' absence here meant they had to be _somewhere_ —and if that somewhere was in a fight with his team, then he'd rather it was his knife growing bloodied.

As Hibana had promised, the _Alive_ counter had begun dropping. The Circle wasn't even shrinking yet, and already, the number of contestants left in the Grounds was dwindling. In the two hours after dawn, as Hibana led Yusuke with a loping gait through the fields, bowing a wide path around a deserted prison complex, the counter dropped to _66_ , then _65_ , then _62_. If he had to guess, squads must have engaged in skirmishes, entire teams blinking out of existence in the aftermath of each brawl.

But not his friends.

It wasn't possible. He wouldn't even entertain the possibility.

They were alive. And— _damn it_ —they were going to stay that way.

Still, when a streak of silver caught Yusuke's eye and drew it skyward, he was more than ready for the distraction. He needed a chase to occupy his feet, a fight to engross his fists—adrenaline to seize his veins. "Target acquired," he called to Hibana.

Her head, tucked within the folds of her hood, twisted his way, but he couldn't find her eyes within the shadows cast over her brow. Nonetheless, her attention belonged to him, and it followed his hand as he pointed toward the oblong, silver drone drifting west over the hills.

A beautiful bird, as she'd have put it.

Just as she swung to follow the line of his finger, a package released from the aircraft's underside. At once, a parachute unfurled, springing wide as rushing wind flooded the canvas, and with a whoop, Yusuke cut to the left, putting them on a southwestern trajectory. Hibana gave chase, and their steady strides devoured the terrain, blurring it beneath their feet.

They'd avoided roads in the time they'd been on the hunt, but now Yusuke sought one out, letting its pavement keep his steps even. He may not be able to quicken his pace beyond the Grounds' restrictions, but he was certain a rolled ankle would slow him. As it was, they may not be the first to the crate—he sure as hell wouldn't be injured when they got there.

"We should be cautious in our approach," Hibana warned. She'd drawn her club from its makeshift hold on her pack, and it howled with each swing of her arms, scything through the air.

In answer, Yusuke sent electricity cracking down his forearms. "Have a little faith, partner o' mine."

She didn't answer, and with the rising sun at their backs, he couldn't catch a glimpse of her face, but something in the tight set of her shoulders told him she was on edge. _Fair enough_. So was he. But that didn't change anything. The drop had to be theirs. Slowing down—taking the safe approach—only increased the odds some asshole would nab it first.

Yusuke wouldn't let that happen.

Ahead, the road they'd claimed as their own met another street, the cracked pavement crossing a hard-packed dirt path, and it was there the crate came to rest. They were still half a mile up the way, bearing down on it from the north, sprinting—though, really, _nothing_ in the Grounds was a proper sprint; at least, not without the aid of an energy drink—between a copse of trees as the dust settled around the package.

Without warning, a canister fitted to the top of the crate burst. Red smoke spilled forth, lofting into the sky on a gusting breeze.

Yusuke's heart rate accelerated. "The hell?" Had that happened last time?

"It's so combatants can track the package from a distance," Hibana explained between breaths. "The guidance smoke always goes off."

"And I just missed it before?"

"Apparently." He heard her smile rather than saw it. "You'd practically climbed inside the crate, after all."

Yusuke was too preoccupied with their potential loot to muster a defense, and as they closed the last feet to its side, he whirled to study the land around the crossroads. Nothing moved in the trees to the east, while to the west and south, the land was so exposed that no one could've approached without being seen.

The crate was theirs.

But whether it contained what they were after remained to be seen.

"I'll keep an eye out," Hibana said, right hand flicking out as she summoned an X-KAIROS. "You check the drop."

Yusuke didn't need to be told twice. Scrabbling past the parachute, he found the crate's latch and yanked it open, then practically tore the door off its hinges as he lunged into the container's innards. Light spilled past his shoulders, illuminating the contents within—highlighting another armored jacket, a knife far better than the one Hibana had bequeathed to him, and a trio of med kits.

But no dag tag.

And worse—no shot.

Without the immediate threat of a fight bearing down on him, Yusuke took his time searching every nook of the crate, but even probing his fingers into its farthest corners turned up no hidden secrets. This drop wasn't the one. Not even close.

Rocking onto his heels, he dragged a forearm across his sweaty forehead. "Well, you said it wouldn't be easy," he muttered as he shoved the med kits into his bag and snagged the dagger.

She sighed. "We may be better off searching for your friends than hunting for loot that may never spawn. If we—"

"No," Yusuke interrupted. "I'm _telling_ you, Hibana, it's a shot we need. Trust me. After that, everything will fall into place." And it would. He knew it. Because once Kuwabara had the Dimension Sword, not even the Grounds could keep them trapped. Turning his back on the pillaged crate, Yusuke glared at the horizon. "Let's find another one."

Hibana hesitated, only a moment, but long enough that he noticed—long enough that he glanced over to meet her gaze. Then her lips pressed thin and she nodded, her voice quiet but hard as she swept a hand toward the west. "After you."

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **4**_ Kills

 _ **62**_ Alive

The Blue drove victims to Hiei's machete like flies to light.

The first he'd discovered an hour after the dome took shape, and he'd chased the woman south on silent feet, catching her slowly, gaining bit by bit as she zagged an inefficient, desperate path across the battleground. His own route had knifed straight and true through the woods, and in the end, as she crept into a tiny hovel of a house a half mile in from the Blue, Hiei had been waiting.

He'd sliced her to ribbons. Left her mutilated, blistered body to rot on the floorboards.

When he'd slunk back into the night, his instincts had sung with pleasure. Not his senses, not his acute hearing or sharp vision. Those had forsaken him.

But his instincts—the gut reflexes that had kept him alive all these years—had fired on all cylinders. He'd buzzed with the thrill of a good hunt, pulsing with the rhythm of death.

And he'd needed more.

So more he found.

Just after dawn, he spotted another target. This man was smarter than the woman. Less panicked. And when Hiei drew close, he discovered the man had escaped the Blue without the horrific welts that stung upon Hiei's fingertips. Perhaps the man been intelligent enough not to test that which he didn't understand—but that also meant he still didn't _understand_ it, and Hiei did.

That was all the advantage he needed.

In a dogged chase that stretched for well over two hours, Hiei hounded the man back toward the dome, harrying him at every opportunity. His foe was clumsy with the sword he held, and though Hiei tried twice to engage him in a proper fight, the man evaded with desperate tenacity, rushing west, west, west—until he hit the Blue.

Trailing the man, Hiei pulled up as his foe plunged through the rippling curtain of light. A shriek of startled pain tore the man's throat ragged, and he whirled back the way he'd come, the sword trembling in his hands. He stared at Hiei, his face a mask of terror.

Standing safely within the ring of light, Hiei held the machete at ease before him. "Fight or flee," he called, adrenaline's ecstasy whetting his words to knife-sharp weapons. "Either way, you die."

With a scream, the man leapt through the barrier-that-was-not-a-barrier, but he'd no sooner cleared the light than did Hiei cut his throat. His flesh parted like silk beneath the dulled edge of the machete, the sheer force of Hiei's swing doing the work the rusted blade could not. The man fell to the dirt, his final breaths wheezing through his lungs in burbling gasps. Mere seconds passed before he bled out, his legs still caught beyond the Blue, his skin blistering under its influence.

Hiei's _Kill_ count ticked to _5_.

Wetting his dry lips, Hiei cleaned his machete on the shoulder of the dead man's jacket, then swiveled south again. He'd roamed nearly all the way back to the initial spot where he'd encountered the Blue, but backtracking had been worthwhile.

One less enemy stood in his way—in his team's way.

Movement ahead caught his eye, and he ducked into a thick crop of trees, watching intently as a woman and man burst through the dome's curtain, running in tandem, their flesh red and raw. They didn't pause to savor their escape, and as they tore east, gasping and frantic, Hiei circled back to his victim's corpse only long enough to heft his forsaken sword.

Then he turned east—and gave chase.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **61**_ Alive

After the first crate, Hibana set a slower pace.

They headed due south, eager to avoid the network of roads they'd taken to reach the drop. Now that they'd cleared the prison compound, Hibana wanted to move toward the southern bridges—to keep the smaller island in play. It didn't matter how many times Yusuke reminded her they didn't need the military outpost anymore. She refused to write it off, refused to close it down as a possible destination.

If nothing else, Hibana and Keiko shared the same stubborn streak.

At least Yusuke's type was consistent...

Overhead, Yokai flitted, its red eye blinking. Under its watchful gaze, Yusuke took up the game they'd begun before.

Time to spin more tales.

He skipped the story of Yukina's rescue. It was too much of a tangled knot to bother with. There was no way to explain why Hiei had shown up without revealing his ties to Yukina—and considering Kuwabara still didn't know that secret, Yusuke figured it best not to go spilling Hiei's mysteries to Hibana and the Gamerunner in one fell swoop.

He had a big yap—but not that big.

So Yusuke didn't bother with Tarukane and his sickening torture techniques. Nor did he get lost in the details of the invite Toguro had extended to the Dark Tournament. All of that was just window dressing. A bunch of fluffy, boring nonsense.

The narrative Hibana wanted him to craft was about his team. About Hiei mastering the Dragon of the Darkness Flame. About Kurama and his foxy inner secrets. About Kuwabara refusing to back down even against demons whose power ran circles around his.

And about Yusuke, too. About what he'd do for his friends. About who he'd become to save them.

In his retelling of the tournament, Yusuke lingered over the fight against Dr. Ichigaki's team, revealing the doctor's machinations that had kept Kurama and Hiei from the ring and then explaining—with the same horror he'd felt back then—what the twisted man had done to M1, M2, and M3.

As farmland took shape around them, he recounted the saga of their round against Team Masho. Hibana was fittingly enraged by the bullshit medical examination that had disqualified Hiei and the Masked Fighter from participating, and he could tell by the quickening of her breath alone that Kurama's herculean efforts against Gama and Touya earned him plenty of her respect. But it wasn't until Yusuke narrated Kuwabara's absurd, impossible victory over Risho that he earned one of her proper smiles.

She glanced sidelong at him, the tilt of her head bringing her grin into the light. Laughter danced in her eyes. "The power of love?" she asked in disbelief. "That's really what he credits his victory to?"

"Sure is." Yusuke laced his hands behind his neck, tipping his head back to study Yokai floating above. "Kuwabara's got two guiding principles in life. The power of love. And the importance of his honor code. It's a whole heap of mumbo jumbo if you ask me. But he beat Risho, and it sure as heck seemed like he was going to die in that ring, so if we have some Red String of Fate to thank for that—then hey, I'm all for it."

"And his honor code? What's that entail?"

Yusuke flapped a dismissive hand. "Hell if I know." He tossed her a conspiratorial wink. "Hiei's got one, too, though. The two of them would never admit it, but they're more alike than you'd think."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

"Nope. You won't." A muscle ticked in Yusuke's jaw as he set his sights dead ahead, his hands falling back to his sides. "You'll meet them for yourself, and then you'll see."

Hibana nudged an elbow against his. "You know," she said, voice soft in a way he wasn't used to from her, "I don't think this is one of those things where if you say it enough, it'll come true. Which isn't to say it won't. I'll do everything in my power to help you find them. But… it's okay to worry. To be scared of what happens if we don't manage it."

Yusuke tucked his arm out of reach. "Being scared isn't in my bag of tricks."

"So what?" She scoffed, levity lightening the sound, taking the edge off its scorn. "You're too old of a dog to change?"

He didn't joke back, though he tried.

Humor didn't answer his summons, remaining strikingly absent as the silence stretched. He blamed Hibana for its disappearance. _She_ was the one who'd suggested a reality in which he might not reunite with Kuwabara or Kurama or Hiei. _She_ was the one who implied they might die here. And now she wanted him to laugh about it?

Didn't she get what their deaths would do to him?

He'd be alone. Well and truly—and forever.

No Keiko waiting at home, always pushing him to be more than he was, to be _better_ than he was. No Kuwabara living in downtown Sarayashiki, his couch always open, his plans always movable when Yusuke truly needed him. No Kurama pretending at humanity, reminding Yusuke to visit Atsuko on occasion, providing a logical word when Yusuke was at his most off-kilter. No Hiei flitting about the edges of their lives, never quite a part of Yusuke's new normal, but never quite absent either.

He'd lost Keiko to life, not death, and he wasn't getting her back, wouldn't have wanted to if he could—but losing the others? Losing his friends?

No.

Never.

"I refuse to live in a world without them," Yusuke said flatly. "That possibility isn't going to happen, so I'm not going to waste my time thinking about it."

Hibana said nothing for a moment. Then, slowly, she raised a hand. One finger pointed south. "Well, seems the Gamerunner approves. There's our second drop."

And sure enough—there it was. A crate plummeting from a fly-by.

Without another word, Yusuke broke into a run.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **5**_ Kills

 _ **61**_ Alive

Two opponents were not as easily cornered as one.

Hiei had to take his time, had to combat the advantages of his prey, crossing off one after another in his systematic pursuit. If he wanted to win, he needed to use not just his experience or his skill with a blade, but his _wits_ —for in this place, he wasn't Jaganshi Hiei. Not in the ways that mattered. He had no superior speed, no Dragon of the Darkness Flame, no Jagan sharpening his every sense.

Yet all the same, there was no foe who could stop him.

Not if he executed his plan correctly.

Thanks to their injuries, his targets couldn't run forever, and he had to make his move before they settled on shelter—before they had a chance to prepare. Once they hunkered down, they'd have their eyes peeled for signs of threat, and if they weren't fools, they'd be protected on at least one side.

But now, as they fled east, they were exposed, witless in their fear of the Blue left far behind them.

He used that terror to his advantage. Like any desperate animal, they were set on putting as much distance between themselves and their hunter as they could, which kept their route unwavering. To gain on them, Hiei made sharp calculations, finding ground where his strides meant more than theirs. When they climbed hills, he ran through valleys, forsaking vision in favor of the shortest path. Where they circled around small settlements, bowing south or north before correcting their course to due east once more, he tore straight through the towns.

Let another enemy befall him.

They'd die like all the others.

For nearly five hours, Hiei kept himself out of sight. He risked only the briefest moments to confirm he was still closing on the pair. Quick glances while tucked within glades of trees. Short appraisals as they crested hills. They kept their heads swiveling, searching constantly for signs of life, but they weren't looking for a shadow. They'd missed him early on, and now he'd crept too close, sliding inside their guard before they'd even realized to expect him.

When his window came, Hiei was ready. He'd expected it.

After all, it was always the most mundane moments in which mistakes were made.

The pair came to a halt in a tight copse, nearly lost to Hiei within the dappled light filtering through the leaves, but he caught signs of motion as the man separated from the woman, moving deeper into the wood. Nature had called. With the worst of the adrenaline from the Blue's assault out of his system, the man had a bladder to relieve.

Which meant his companion was alone.

Vulnerable.

Only then did Hiei abandon stealth.

He closed on the narrow stretch of forest like a springing beast, sword in hand, silent battle cry on his tongue. The woman wasn't ready, wasn't even looking, but as he flew through a dense thicket, dead leaves crunched underfoot. She swiveled, and in the time it took to swing his blade, she'd dodged, throwing herself to the dirt and rolling away.

She came up with an axe in her blistered hands. Welts dotted her cheeks like diseased pocks, and burns ran up the length of her arms, but she didn't waver. Didn't even hesitate.

They met in a clash of steel. Her axe screeched as it skidded down the length of his sword. He stepped through the blow, twisting past her and sluicing back, blade cutting in a swooping curve. He'd aimed for her waist, content with a rough hack across her middle, but she danced out of reach.

Snarling, Hiei followed.

Her death didn't need to be clean. There'd be no points awarded for style. Whether he beheaded her or gutted her or brought her to her knees with a thousand paper cuts didn't matter. As long as she died, he'd have won. Her thinking appeared to match his, and she met him with vicious desperation, wielding her axe as skillfully as he guided his sword. But her footwork wasn't as clean, and when a backward step landed her upon a dead branch, her ankle rolled.

She pitched into the dirt.

Hiei's sword scythed across her middle.

The scream she loosed echoed through the trees. If her partner hadn't heard their fight before, there'd be no missing it now, but Hiei didn't wait for the man to appear. Dropping to one knee, he drew a dagger and plunged it into the woman's heart.

She went quiet.

 _ **6**_ Kills

 _ **60**_ Alive

Freeing the knife from her chest, Hiei straightened just as the man careened into the clearing, his belt unfastened, his fists curled—no weapon in sight. "You bastard," he hollered, lunging across the glade.

Hiei evaded him nimbly.

"You killed her," the man screamed. In that moment, he was neither human nor demon. He was merely an animal. Pitiful and enraged. Mournful and terrified. "You killed Sakiko!"

Hiei ducked past another punch, skipping inside the man's reach on darting feet. Abandoning his sword, Hiei seized him by the neck and drew him close, all but embracing him. The man scrabbled at Hiei, tearing at his clothing, yanking at his hair. Hiei didn't falter.

He simply held him. For two long, unending breaths.

Then he drove the dagger into the man's gut.

And the counters ticked.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **57**_ Alive

Nine med kits. Thirteen bandages. Four pill bottles. Six energy drinks. Three protective jackets they had no need for. A ghillie suit that summoned laugh lines to Hibana's eyes after Yusuke briefly shrugged it on. A second map of the Grounds.

Zero dog tags.

Zero fights.

Zero adrenaline shots.

A heap of bullshit waist-deep and rancid in every possible way.

"He's doing it on purpose," Yusuke grumbled as they high-tailed it west of the fourth drop they'd collected. He'd abandoned the ghillie suit, preferring not to hamper himself, but his bag was still fit to bursting with all their new supplies. Its zipper had barely closed after he'd looted the last crate, and they'd had to move his water canteen to Hibana's bag to compensate. "The Gamerunner is probably sitting somewhere in that diabolical lab of his popping champagne and having himself a good old laugh."

"Maybe." Hibana leapt a fallen log, then skipped across a series of stones, landing with nary a sound. It was the most lively he'd ever seen her, more at ease than he'd have thought she knew how to be. "But today's haul is damn good. Even you'll be hard-pressed to die with nine first aids at your disposal."

Yusuke shot her the finger. "Hardy-har-har."

"Listen, if you can't appreciate the good fortune we've had purely because it hasn't earned us an adrenaline shot, then you're a lost cause." Hibana caught his wrist, pausing atop a stone that put them firmly at even height. "We've raided four—I repeat, _four_ —crates today, and we haven't run into other combatants at a single one. The odds of that, Urameshi, were so abysmal that I'd have staked my life on our kill counts climbing. But they haven't. So yeah, we don't have an adrenaline shot, but who cares?" Her fingers slid down the last inches of his forearm and laced through his hand, squeezing tight. "We're alive. Forty-three others aren't, but _we are_."

"Uh huh, but another fifty-two have to bite it before it matters."

"True." Her smile faded, and she released him, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. "But I'd rather have a one in fifty-seven shot at getting out of here than a one in one hundred chance."

"It's not one in fifty-seven," he snapped. He pointed between them both and shook his head. "It's not two in fifty-seven either. It's _five_. If we don't _all_ escape—you and me, Kuwabara and Kurama and Hiei—then we've lost. That's how I operate."

The last traces of mirth slipped from her eyes. "You think I don't want your friends to survive?"

He thought of the stories he'd spent the day telling her. It was well past noon—well past the Circle beginning to close—and he'd stumbled all the way to the end of the Dark Tournament. Through Genkai's true death. Through Kuwabara's false one. Through Kurama's bullshit loss to Karasu. Through Hiei's full assimilation of the Dragon. Through Yusuke's grief-fueled victory over Toguro. And last of all, through Genkai's resurrection.

To that immense, impossible-to-capture moment when he'd learned she hadn't died on him after all.

During the whole retelling, Hibana had been a rapt audience, listening as attentively as Yokai flying overhead, but she'd never shared her own history. She'd made no mention of friends or boyfriends or allies.

He couldn't shake that absence now, and it sharpened his tongue as he muttered, "Nah. I just think you're so used to surviving on your own that you forgot some of us have people we're fighting _for_."

The color leeched from her cheeks. She stepped from the rock stiffly, moving west without a backward glance. So softly he almost couldn't hear her, she hissed, "Fuck you, Urameshi."

He didn't apologize. He was too frustrated, too worn down by this endless day of hope and disappoint, opportunity and failure. His nerves needed a break. They needed off the Gamerunner's wild ride, and they needed it now.

But more than anything, they needed the guys.

Hibana's route took them over the hill's ridge and down into a small forest. Yusuke stayed ten yards behind her, keeping her in sight but not close enough to converse with, and so, when she lurched to a standstill beside a gargantuan tree, he couldn't yet see what she did.

Breaking into a jog, he loped to her side.

In the clearing ahead, a supply drop sat canted at a diagonal, lodged between a bolder and a tree trunk. Faint traces of red smoke still leaked from the tube atop it, but the branches were so dense overhead that Yusuke doubted much of the signal had made it to open sky. Craning his head backward, he could faintly trace the path of destruction the package had wrought through the canopy, but the leaves had mostly folded back into place.

Keeping this loot hidden.

Undisturbed.

His pulse ratcheted higher in his veins as he bounded to the crate's side. By now, he was a pro at popping the latch and hefting the door open, but with the drop held awkwardly off the ground like it was, he had to literally heave himself inside it in order to appraise its contents.

At first, his inventory turned up the usual boring results. Another medical patch. Two bandages. An entire box of MREs. He tossed it all outside the crate, trusting Hibana to gather what she felt was valuable, then probed deeper, groping blindly along the crease of the box, searching for anything that gravity had wedged out of reach.

His fingertips encountered nothing, just metal, cold and unforgiving—until suddenly, in the very bottom corner of the crate, he hit upon a tube. A slender, fragile, plastic-encased cylinder.

In that moment, he forgot everything. His frustration with the day. His fight with Hibana. His longing for his friends. All of it.

This was it. This was what they were after. He didn't need to see it in the light to be sure. He already knew it all the way in the depths of his bones.

 _An adrenaline shot_.

And it was theirs.

* * *

AN: Well, I've had an unbelievable two days. A failure in the system that delivers natural gas to my home caused explosions and fires throughout my town and two others. I'm among 8,000 people who had to evacuate our houses until further notice. Luckily, my sister lives nearby, and I can stay with her. More importantly, I was able to rescue my dog, which was a big unknown for a bit. At this point I have no idea yet when I'll be able to return home (and I suspect when I do, there won't be any active gas lines, which means no hot water and no stove/oven), so I figured I'd get this chapter up ASAP so I don't have to worry about finding time in the morning. Yay for having material ready in advance!

Big heaps of thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! (Well, all the real people rather than the spam bots...) You guys are the absolute best! All my love to: MissIdeophobia, Lady Hummingbird, Hyphen, roseeyes, Shell1331, Laina Inverse, SlytherclawQueen (you're an absolute hero for review every chapter as you went!), and RobinNightingale!


	14. Here Comes That Blue

_**Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **Squad**_ : Kuwabara, Youko

 _ **0**_ Kills

 _ **57**_ Alive

"Do you think Yusuke and Hiei have found each other?"

"We can certainly hope so."

Kuwabara chewed his inner cheek, deciding not to tell Kurama what a stupid answer that was. If their discussion last night was anything to go by, Kurama was feeling a bit touchy about his exact degree of genius, and Kuwabara had no interest in prodding any of the fox's open wounds. Better to bite his tongue and keep his worries to himself.

Rubbing roughly at his grimy chin, Kuwabara puzzled over the town before them. It wasn't large exactly, but it was organized in a neat grid of streets, laid out like a city instead of some rinky dink village. The buildings were large, too, some as tall as apartment complexes in Sarayashiki. But the streets were deserted.

The place was a ghost town.

A sign they'd passed a half mile back on the road here had identified the settlement as Severny, and Kurama had turned the word over on his tongue like it was the key to a riddle, savoring its syllables. Testing it. But if he deciphered anything inside its sounds, he hadn't enlightened Kuwabara, and when they'd reached the edge of town, Kurama had insisted they hunker down and look for signs of life before carrying on.

Their stakeout proved an exercise in wasted time.

No movement ever manifested within the husks of the town's battered buildings. The structures were as ravaged and unsteady as any Kuwabara had seen yet, and they were just as devoid of occupants. Watching them was as riveting as sitting through lectures in the Intro to Literature class he'd hated so much—meaning it _wasn't_ captivating. At all. Hell, at least he'd known that introductory class would get him into the upper levels he actually cared about. Staring at Severny offered no such promise.

Still, Kuwabara had mostly stayed quiet, respecting the need to let Kurama's gears turn. Eventually, though, as minutes stretched into hours, his questions had gotten the best of him. How could they not? After all, if Yusuke and Hiei were out there somewhere—and they _had_ to be, didn't they?—how was it not killing Kurama that they were still separated? None of which was to say Kuwabara was anything less than thrilled a billion times over that he'd been reunited with Kurama. But without Yusuke and Hiei, did it even count?

It was only as the sun kissed the western horizon that Kurama at last rose from the dirt, pushing himself upright with palms pressed flat to the earth. Kuwabara tried not to stare, tried not to make it obvious how _off_ Kurama seemed.

His inherent grace was missing. The easy poise with which he typically moved had evaporated, leaving him as clumsy as Kuwabara usually appeared when they were side by side. Now they were equals. Both reduced to mundane humanity.

Kuwabara didn't like it.

Was Hiei the same way? Slow. Ungainly.

Hell—the shrimp must _despise_ that.

Stifling a chuckle, Kuwabara followed Kurama toward the town, trying—and no doubt failing—to maintain a low profile. He didn't need Kurama's voice in his ear to tell him that just because they hadn't _seen_ anyone didn't mean Severny was truly empty. Someone could be hiding anywhere inside its dilapidated homes, waiting to shank the first unsuspecting idiot that stumbled across them.

"Do you think we should keep leaving red cloth behind?" Kuwabara whispered as they slipped into the back entrance of a three-floor complex. "Maybe Hiei will find us the same way you found me." Yusuke wouldn't, of course, because Yusuke was as observant as a rock, but Hiei might.

"Hush," Kurama urged.

Kuwabara bit down a sigh.

They worked through the building in silent tandem. To Kuwabara's disappointment, they didn't shout verification to each other as they uncovered each empty room, but at least this time he wasn't clearing the apartments alone, and in under ten minutes, they'd swept every floor before settling in a relatively undamaged suite on the second story as their temporary encampment. After quickly fortifying the doorway, Kuwabara investigated the kitchen and discovered it fully stocked with canned food and dried jerky. As he tore into the rations with gusto, Kurama took up station at the window.

Around a mouthful of cold beans, Kuwabara asked, "Well, what do you think? If we find more red cloth, should we leave hints? It's gotta be better than nothing, right?"

Kurama shook his head. "I can't say I agree. In fact, I removed what you left behind previously." One of his slender hands delved into his pocket, emerging with a fistful of red fabric. "You're right that Hiei might find your breadcumbs, but so could anyone else."

"Well, sure… But no one would know to follow it."

"We can't guarantee that."

Kuwabara swallowed a gigantic mouthful, ignoring the gummy, disgusting texture of the room-temperature goop. "Then how the heck are we going to find each other? You hoping Urameshi will just knock on the door?" He thrust his spoon at the barricade they'd constructed and wagged the flatware fiercely. A stray bean plopped into his lap. Grimacing, he flicked it off his knee. "I don't want to just count on luck."

"Nor do I, but we can't take undue risks either." Kurama turned his back on the window, drifting over to the battered countertop that divided the kitchen from the living room. Seemingly preoccupied, he picked up a bag of dried mango and fiddled with the plastic. "I'm inclined to believe it wasn't mere circumstance that caused us to wake so close to one another in the arena, and I'd be willing to gamble on the odds that Hiei and Yusuke were similarly close. If I'm right, I'd say it's equally likely that they struck out in the direction we did. Thanks to the ocean, the north and east would be dead ends, and if they spotted the same bombings as we witnessed, they'd hesitant to move south. Which leaves west—as we've gone."

"So what? We have no idea how big this place is. We could spend the next year walking west for all we know."

"I doubt that." Kurama peeled back a corner of the mangoes package. "There were only a hundred combatants when we began. A mere 57 now. For the fight to continue at this pace—as I'm sure it's intended to—the battlefield can't be overly large."

Kuwabara scratched the stubble forming along his jawline. "Okay… But what's your point?"

"I suspect our best chance to locate Hiei and Yusuke is to continue on as we have. We should trust our instincts, as surely as they have no doubt trusted their own." He huffed a laugh so closely related to a sigh Kuwabara couldn't be sure it actually held any humor. "If there is one thing we know about our friends, it's that they're creatures of instinct, correct?"

"I guess," Kuwabara answered after a beat. Not quite sure he agreed with the plan, he sucked down a final mouthful of beans, then tossed the empty can in the sink. "Seems like it leaves an awful lot to chance."

"No more so than hoping the wrong eyes don't land upon your threads."

Maybe.

But couldn't they do both plans? What was to stop them from heading west _and_ leaving a trail of red scraps? No matter what Kurama said about its inherent risks, Kuwabara's thread of fate had brought them back together, and if it could do that once, then it could do so twice more.

He was about to say as much when Kurama's gaze slid past his shoulder, deep lines carving tracts across his forehead. "Kuwabara," he said, tone too rigid to pass for calm, "come here."

Whirling to look at whatever had drawn Kurama's attention, Kuwabara discovered traces of blue light melding through the moldy plaster. Before his eyes, the glow drew closer, sliding free of the wall as it glided across the floor. He lurched back from it. His sixth sense might have abandoned him, but he didn't need his awareness to tell him a shrinking barrier of energy was _not_ something he wanted to tangle with.

Scrambling, he seized his rucksack and secured the straps over his shoulder, then raced for the fortified door. Kurama beat him to it and, with a full-body effort, threw his shoulder against the barricade, jarring it free. One after another, they whipped into the hall, but as Kuwabara sped for the stairs to the first floor, the blue light swept over him.

Instant pain besieged his nerves.

Heat flooded across his skin, crackling and sparking. It wasn't intense, wasn't unbearable—but it scorched him everywhere. Every inch of skin burned with it, his clothes offering no protection.

He grunted as tiny blisters took shape across his hands and crept up his arms. A breath later, the Blue overtook Kurama, and a gasp of startled discomfort tore from the fox before he could swallow it. As one, they stumbled through the last of their descent and staggered into the complex's entry hall.

It took only moments for Kuwabara's panic to fade. Not entirely. Not nearly so. But enough for him to think, enough for him to realize he wasn't dying.

Befuddlement dawning, he sprinted for the exit. "It's not… killing us, is it?"

"Doesn't seem to be." Kurama flung open the door and sprung into the open, Kuwabara tight on his heels. "Not yet, at least."

In the street, the reality of what they faced finally took shape. The blue light stretched in all directions, tinting the entire landscape, the air warping with its heated charge. Kuwabara couldn't tell where it ended, but the edge must have been somewhere ahead—perhaps still shrinking even as they sprinted to catch up.

"It came from the north," Kuwabara said. With every step, his bag jarred against his back, heavy and cumbersome— _too_ cumbersome. "Should we go south?"

A welt split open across Kurama's cheek, blood dripping toward his lip. He grimaced. "Yes. Quickly."

"Don't gotta tell me twice."

As one, they ran.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **57**_ Alive

The adrenaline shot was so fragile. So breakable.

So small.

It was like any needle Yusuke had ever seen. Protective outer tube. Thin inner cylinder. Sharp, pointed tip protected with a plastic cap. Plunger awaiting decompression.

Boring. Mundane.

But within that inner tube, clear fluid waited. A dose of liquid power, holding out for the moment when it would bring a fighter alive, when it would unlock everything the Gamerunner had trapped away inside his victims. Once it coursed in Kuwabara's veins, the Dimension Sword would be theirs—and they'd be out of the Grounds before the Gamerunner even knew what threat his stupid shot had unlocked.

This shot would break the game.

It would change everything.

"Urameshi?" Hibana called.

Still crouched inside the drop crate, Yusuke couldn't see her, but he could hear the impatience in her voice, worry tinging her words with fear. For a second longer, he remained in the dark shadows, savoring the fact that _she_ was fretting about _him._ Then, cradling the adrenaline shot like precious treasure, he climbed awkwardly out of the crate's opening and dropped to the forest floor.

An X-KAIROS burned in Hibana's palm, the exterior spheres twisting around the central orb, but at the sight of him, the energy attack faded. She exhaled slowly. "Did you take a nap in there?"

Grinning, he tucked the hand curled around the shot into his pocket and rolled his other shoulder up in a lazy shrug. "You're welcome to a turn if you like. You look a bit like a truck ran you over." Striding closer, he added with a cocky grin, "Twice for good measure."

She didn't laugh, merely jerked her chin at the crate. "Find anything worthwhile?"

This time, his shrug encompassed his whole body. "Depends on your definition." He eased another step nearer to her. "Or… on your perspective, I guess."

"Spit it out, Urameshi. Yes or no?"

The distance between them narrowed down to inches as he leaned in, his forehead nearly touching hers. Deftly, he slid the shot from his pocket and pressed its length against her stomach, then murmured in a conspiratorial whisper, "I'm not just happy to see you."

Keiko would've slapped him. Hit first, ask questions later. That was her motto.

Hibana merely went stiff.

Her hand rose, not to strike him, but to splay against his chest and push him backward. He didn't resist, opting instead to slide the needle into his sleeve, hiding it once more. The Gamerunner didn't need to know Yusuke had found the shot. Maybe the bastard would work it out anyway. Maybe this was all part of some nefarious, evil plot the asshole had brewing. But if it wasn't—if there was even the _slightest_ chance the shot could be a secret only Yusuke and Hibana shared—then he sure as heck wasn't going to toss away that opportunity.

"Don't touch me," she said dryly. A note of warning rang in the syllables.

He frowned. Had she not caught his meaning? He'd have thought it was pretty damn obvious what he'd gotten his hands on, but none of the excitement rumbling in his chest had made itself known in her dark eyes. Hell, from within her hood, her irises looked practically black—dead and dark and… angry.

And that was when he remembered.

Right… All of ten minutes ago, he'd unhinged his jaw, lifted his leg, and shoved his foot so far down his throat it came out his ass.

 _I just think you're so used to surviving on your own that you forget some of us have people we're fighting for._

He was such a fucking idiot.

"Hibana…"

She turned her back on him, hefting her bag more firmly over her shoulder. "We need to keep moving. If another drop falls, we won't see it—"

He caught her wrist, tugged her closer—fumbled for words. "We don't need another drop." He practically whispered, painfully aware of the spy hovering not far overhead, soaking up their every interaction. Hardly daring to breathe, he slid his fingers up her arm, drawing her nearer still. "I didn't mean what I said. About you forgetting to care about other people. I…" He tossed his head, trying to shake strands of hair from his eyes. "Can we just rewind the last fifteen minutes and forget all that bullshit?"

"You said what you said, Urameshi. Whether you meant for me to know it or not, you still think it. On some level, that's your opinion of me." She raised her chin, a ragged swallow working down her throat—and in that moment, staring into her flat, dull gaze, he hated himself.

Urameshi Yusuke, monumental dimwit and asshole extraordinaire.

What a disaster.

If he was Kuwabara, he'd spout apologies a thousand times over. Grovel for forgiveness. Give her one of those impossible-to-escape hugs Kuwabara had nailed down to a science.

If he was Kurama, he'd never have fucked up so damn impressively to begin with. But if he did, he'd offer up his regret in one perfectly phrased sentiment and gift her a smile that meant more than any garbled sorry could ever encompass.

And if he was Hiei, he'd tell her that words meant nothing and what mattered was that they'd saved each other's lives and they'd so again, and nothing he did or did not say would alter that fact. He'd make it a non-issue. Insist it was irrelevant with such conviction she'd have no choice but to believe him.

But he wasn't Kuwabara or Kurama or Hiei.

He was just Yusuke.

And Urameshi Yusuke was useless.

Still gripping her elbow, he forced himself to say, "Remember Genkai? The Masked Fighter from the Dark Tournament?" When Hibana said nothing, Yusuke plowed onward. "She trained me. Was my mentor for years and years. Still is, sorta. And since the day we met, she's had one name for me. _Dimwit_."

Hibana's lips puckered ever-so-faintly, their corners twisting almost as if she was fighting back a smile. "What's your point?"

"Well, mostly that Genkai's a pretty brilliant woman, even if she is an ass. And… she's always had a solid read on me."

Hibana pitched a brow toward her hairline.

"I'm a dimwit," Yusuke finished plainly. "Through and through."

"Is this your version of apologizing, Urameshi?"

"It's my version of saying: I have a big mouth and a quick temper and the patience of your average six-year-old, and I let all that get the best of me." Without quite thinking about it, he rubbed his thumb in a circle along the crease of her elbow, wishing her jacket wasn't a barrier between them. "Won't happen again."

This time, when the smile twisted at Hibana's lips, she let it crack through. Just a bit. It reached her eyes, twinkling faintly, burning back the shadows that had wreathed her, and with a relieved sigh, he slipped the adrenaline shot from his sleeve, letting it tumble to his palm and drawing her gaze with a jerk of his chin. He kept is tucked between them, still hoping to hide it from Yokai.

Recognition flickered across her features, her lips—pinker and fuller than he'd ever appreciated before—popping into an oval of surprise.

"The golden moose is ours," he declared, ratcheting his grin to its brightest wattage.

"The golden _goose_ , you mean?"

Pocketing the shot again, he leaned closer, his left hip knocking into her right as he released her arm and slung his own around her shoulders. Hooking her in tight, he breathed in her ear, "I _really_ don't care what the saying is." He could've sworn she shuddered, and somehow, he grinned wider. So softly she'd never have heard him if his lips weren't literally brushing her temple, he added, "That shot's our ticket out of here. It's worth more than every animal in the world turned to gold."

It didn't escape his notice that she remained in his embrace, tucked so close to him he could feel the rhythm of her breathing against his chest. "I can't believe you found one. I thought we'd be chasing drops until the end of time."

"You've got no faith, Hibana."

"No," she agreed, "I didn't. But I'm starting to."

At that, his veins caught fire, and with a burst of bold audacity, he grabbed her by the waist, lifted her off her feet, and spun them both in a wild, victorious circle. He whooped, tossing his head back to shoot Yokai a cocky smirk, and as Hibana's arms encircled his shoulders, her own head ducking into the column of his throat, he didn't care that they were still stuck in the Grounds, that they could die at any moment, that his team was somewhere out of reach.

No.

For that moment—that one, brief heartbeat—he was on the top of the world, riding a high as all-encompassing as any he'd experienced as Spirit Detective. He had an adrenaline shot. He had Hibana. And next, they'd find his friends.

After that, there was a dimension to break and Gamerunner-ass to kick.

And—if he could swing it—a girl to win.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Youko Kurama

 _ **Squad**_ : Youko, Kuwabara

 _ **6**_ Kills

 _ **57**_ Alive

The blisters formed everywhere.

Across Kurama's hands. Over the small of his back. Along the spread of his shoulders. In the creases of his armpits. At the back of his knees. Under his hair.

 _Everywhere_.

The pain was mounting, shifting more and more from discomfort to agony with each passing stride. It churned at the edges of his thoughts, muddling his intellect with the primal need to _escape, escape, escape_.

Initially, they'd run due south, hypothesizing the Blue had swept in from the north, but throughout all of Severny, they never found noncorrosive air. Perhaps there wasn't any. Perhaps the Blue had closed over the entire arena, and every last inch of the battlefield had grown unsafe. It was possible. Maybe the field of one hundred had been granted two days to kill each other, and now that window had passed so the fight was being ended for them.

But the _Alive_ tally wasn't dropping fast enough for Kurama to believe that.

There had to be somewhere safe.

Kurama and Kuwabara merely needed to find it.

Outside Severny, they adjusted their course, turning east, back toward the land where they'd first awoken, reasoning that the Blue might have closed in from a northwestern direction, and if they made a beeline to the southeast, they'd find its far edge.

The going wasn't slow, precisely, but it was a pathetic mockery of the speed they should be capable of, and a seething rage built in the space between Kurama's ribs at the cage that kept him so trapped. This body was a falsity. A prison. When the moment arrived in which they escaped this battleground, he would slaughter the weak, cowardly devil who'd imprisoned them. He had no interest in sharing this kill, though Yusuke and Hiei would no doubt jockey him for it.

They'd fail.

He'd make sure of it.

When Kuwabara stumbled for the third time—not from exhaustion, but from pain-induced weakness—Kurama stopped their mad dash long enough to extract the bandages they'd gathered from Kuwabara's pack. He applied one to his own forearm, needing it to steady his hands, then shoved up Kuwabara's shirt and plastered two across his chest in quick succession.

The relief came quickly, manifesting as the bandages faded into nothingness. Not even an additional wrapping healed Kurama's welts entirely, but they eased the pain enough for his thoughts to clarify. His breathing grew more regular, though he knew they couldn't stay still long enough for their lungs to recover completely.

Kuwabara blinked at his empty chest, nonplussed. "That's just… weird."

"Video game-esque, is it not?"

Kuwabara scrunched up his nose. "Guess so." He looked up, whirling around as if might spot lines of code in the air just out of sight. "You think that's what this is? A video game?" Suspicion clouded his brow. "Did the Gamemaster backslide? Are we in his territory?"

Despite the welts already opening across Kurama's flesh once more, a chuckle snuck past his lips. "I doubt this is Amanuma's work, but it _does_ have the feel of a simulation." Allowing himself one final, bracing breath, Kurama zipped Kuwabara's backpack closed, shook out the tension in his shoulders, and directed his feet to the southeast. "Ready to go on?"

"Don't have a choice, do I?"

No sooner had Kuwabara asked the question than did his eyes light up, childish glee uncurling across his features in a sprawling grin. With one swipe of his massive hand, he snagged hold of the chain around Kurama's throat and pulled the dog tag free of his shirt.

Realization dawned on Kurama, too, before Kuwabara could even get words out.

Well.

What a showcase in idiocy the last days of his life had been.

"But maybe we don't need to run," Kuwabara said in the same moment as Kurama announced dryly, "Though perhaps I can fly us."

As Kuwabara hooted with thrilled relief, Kurama let instinct take over, drawing on the dog tag's hidden power as readily as he would've summoned a Rose Whip. His muscles morphed, turning liquid in the fraction of a moment before they become something new—something animal and strong. His bones stretched and compressed, new ones spreading from his back beneath the thin flesh of his wings. Feathers flooded his nerves with sensation, alerting him to every rippling current in the air.

In moments, he was the griffin.

In moments, he was _power_ , raw and unfiltered and wild.

Already, he felt the scorch of the Blue searing the skin beneath his feathers, and the beast in him screeched his fury to the sky as he stretched his wings and sunk low, granting the human a chance to climb atop his back. Meaty fists closed over the dense plumage between his shoulders, the human's weight settling along his spine, unwieldly and burdensome, but not enough to keep him grounded.

With a warning caw, he tensed his muscles, ran a few short leaps to gather speed, and launched into the air. His wings beat—once, twice—and then he was up, soaring southeast. Fleeing, yes.

But _flying_ , too.

* * *

AN: So sorry I never posted to my tumblr a map for last chapter. It has been... quite the two weeks. I won't get into the nitty gritty of the suckitude that resulted from the gas explosions, but basically: I won't have gas until mid-November, which means no stove/oven, no hot water, and no heat. Nonetheless, I'm still chugging along, and I promise I'll get a map up for this chapter (and likely include one for last chapter as well). Thanks for your patience!

Next chapter, at long last, we finally learn a fair bit about Hibana. Soooo... tune in then, yeah?

All my gratitude to you lovelies who reviewed last chapter, especially those of you concerned about my welfare. You're all the very best! Thank you: MusicOfMadness, PondRiverWilliams, Biku-sensei-sez-meow, MissIdeophobia, Kyra Evans, Hyphen, Shell1331, LordKirkleton, and DeusVenenare!


	15. Run The Calcs

_**Chapter 15: Run The Calcs**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **54**_ Alive

Hibana had a freckle under her chin.

Right at the curve of it. Where her skin swept over the line of her jaw. A perfect, delicate circle.

Try though he might, Yusuke couldn't stop staring at it.

She was oblivious, her head rocked back against the wall of the house where they'd boarded up for the night. Again, they'd found themselves a second story bedroom to hide away in, though this time, the mattress was clean enough that Yusuke had convinced Hibana to join him on it. They'd hunkered at sundown, and by the time the sun had fully quit for the day, he'd wrangled himself sideways, propping his head in her lap. If she'd questioned him, he'd planned to whip out the same excuse he'd used the night before, some bullshit about the chill in the air and a need for shared heat.

She hadn't questioned him.

Instead, her left hand had delved almost absently into his hair, her thumb tracing along his hairline while her nails massaged his scalp. It had been nearly enough to woo him to sleep then and there, but he'd held out, fending off unconsciousness with the sight of that mesmerizing freckle.

She held a flashlight in her right hand, and her attention was firmly on her trusty map, determining where they should head now that their quest for drops had ended. It was thanks to the flashlight's beam that he spotted a second freckle at the hinge of her jaw, just as tiny and flawless as the first.

"Have you heard of the Chapter Black tape?" he asked through a yawn.

Her answer came slowly—uncertainly. "Yes. Though… I half-thought it was myth."

"You half-thought wrong."

She could've asked a million questions. After all, it was the first thing he'd said in twenty minutes. Hell, she'd probably thought he'd fallen asleep. But—true to form—she cut straight to the case. "Why have you brought that up?"

"Because it was the next case my team faced after the Dark Tournament." A drowsy fantasy swept over him as her fingers trailed over his temple, and for a moment, he could so clearly envision himself pulling her down to lie beside him, his arms wrapping around her tight, that when he blinked and discovered them both unmoved, he felt as jarred as if he'd woken from a dream in which he'd been falling.

"Yokai's not here, Urameshi."

"Hmm?"

The huff of her signature laugh spread like fire through his gut. With all the patience of a toddler's mother, she explained, "You don't need to tell me stories because Yokai isn't here. There's no narrative to build. Not right now."

"What if I _want_ to tell you?" He reached up and pressed the tip of his pointer finger squarely over the freckle beneath her chin. "Not Yokai. Just you."

"You should sleep," she said, tipping her head down and catching him with a soft, confused smile. "One of us deserves to be resting, at least."

"Don't want to."

That was lie.

His muscles ached for a breather, exhaustion insisting he give in right this second, all but yanking his eyelids shut, but he didn't want to succumb. For as long as he could, he wanted to lie here, staring at those twin freckles, soaking in Hibana's hidden spots. He wanted to overwrite the memory of the birthmark on Keiko's left hip with the precise curve of Hibana's jaw. He wanted a million things—and sleep wasn't one of them.

Extending his thumb, he covered the freckle at the hinge of her jaw. For a beat, he said nothing, but then he let his hand fall back to his chest and murmured, "You should kiss me."

Her laugh was a bark, full and throaty with surprise. "Come again?"

His shrug pushed his shoulders up into her thigh. "If we're going to die here, I'd like my last kiss not to be with someone who's no longer in love with me."

Her smile faded. " _I'm_ not in love with you, Urameshi."

"But you're not _not_ in love with me, either."

There was a difference. Whether Hibana understood it or not.

"No one's dying, remember? That's what you keep telling me. You promised we're getting out of here." Her fingers stilled in his hair. Only her thumb remained in motion, sweeping slow circles over his temple. "Don't take it back."

He grinned ruefully. "Fine. No dying. But the request stands."

Rolling her eyes, Hibana poked a finger into his bicep. "Sleep. Now. I'll wake you at midnight to see the next Circle." For a second, she bit her inner cheek, her forehead creased in uncertainty. Then—to his complete awe—she raised two fingers to her lips, bestowed a peck upon their tips, and lowered them to his.

He fell asleep with laughter in his chest and her fingers in his hair.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **7**_ Kills

 _ **54**_ Alive

Hiei slept.

Not well. Not for long.

But, at last, he found a sturdy, wide-branched tree, climbed into the canopy, and tied himself to the largest limb he could find at a height he deemed safe—not from falling, but from prying eyes below. Lashing his legs into place rankled his pride, but in this clumsy form, he knew better than to think he'd remain stationary in sleep. Under usual circumstances, he'd never have fallen, not even if he was unconscious.

But now?

Well… needless to say, tethering himself to the branch was less humiliating than plummeting from it, so knots and bindings it was.

He'd traveled further east and a fair bit south, briefly abandoning his hunt for prey in favor of a safe resting spot. The Blue had still been creeping inward at sundown, and though he'd lost sight of the edge after turning east, he hadn't wanted to stop where it might eclipse him eventually.

When sleep came, his right hand clasped his machete, ready—even on the verge of slumber—for its next fight. Its next kill.

Its next win.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **51**_ Alive

"You weren't kidding," Yusuke mumbled through a yawn. "The next Circle really isn't centered in the first."

Hibana had shaken him awake five minutes ago, and he'd lurched upright so wildly he'd nearly headbutted her in the chin. After a squawking, curse-filled apology, he'd managed to get his head on straight enough to appreciate the map she'd spread on the mattress between them. The next white ring had appeared, signifying the second boundary the Circle would shrink down to.

Its southwestern edge kissed the rim of the current Circle, fitting snugly along its curve, leaving the northeastern border to shrink accordingly. Once it closed, the field where he'd woken up would officially live in unsafe territory, and most of the water on the Grounds' eastern edge would be truly unpassable.

The southern island remained unscathed, barely any further ground lost, which kept the military outpost accessible. Likewise, the towns of Pochinki and Mylta would stay in-bounds. But other than those three spots, everything else labeled on the map would be unreachable, the Grounds reduced to wilderness and fields and a few scattered roads, all its major settlements stuck beyond the Blue.

"Have I lied to you yet?" Hibana asked.

"Dunno." He shoved a hand through his hair, not sure if the gesture fixed the wild strands or made them worse. "You don't tell me much of anything, so…" He let the word trail off teasingly, and she rolled her eyes with a soft huff.

"The answer is 'no.' I haven't."

"Well, sure. But that's easy when you never open your yap."

She flicked Yusuke square on the kneecap, and though the sensation barely registered for him, from the immediate glare she shot her fingers, he suspected the assault hadn't gone as she planned. _Good_. Served her right.

"I've told you everything you needed to know."

"About the Grounds, maybe. But not about you." He rubbed once at his sleep-heavy eyes, then drew one knee to his chest, looping an arm around his shin and leaning back against the wall. "Tell me something about Hibana. Just one itty, bitty thing." Her brow creased, her lips parting on what he was sure would be some throw away, flippant answer, but before she could get a word out, he thrust up a hand. "Actually, no. I take that back." He grinned, a devious idea taking root. "How about a game of twenty questions?"

"No."

"Oh, yes." He pointed a finger square at her chest. "I've gushed and cooed and blathered about my friends enough that if they knew about it, they'd mock me for the rest of eternity. The least you can do is answer twenty questions."

She batted his hand away, but sighed, avoiding his eyes. "I'll give you one question. That's it."

"Hell no. _Not_ a deal." Offering up a hand for a shake, he said, "Ten questions. Split it down the middle."

"No."

Fighting to keep hold of his cocky grin, he refused to let frustration sneak into his tone. Nothing? She'd truly tell him nothing? "Five, then. I'm not accepting any less."

It took a moment—a tense, too long moment—but finally her hand slipped into his. "Fine." She shook once, then tried to pull away.

He didn't let go.

"But if you give me shitty answers, the question doesn't count. And if I have to ask sub-questions, because you're evasive and try to trick me, those don't count either."

"Urameshi—"

He squeezed her fingers. "That's the deal, Hibana. Take it or take it, because I'm not accepting other options."

"Have I told you what an ass you are?"

"Sure have." He flashed her a wink. "Keep it coming. Gotta rein in my ego, don't we?"

She didn't answer, and this time, when she pulled back her hand, he relinquished it. She had that closed-off mask back in place—that my-walls-are-forty-feet-deep-and-you're-not-breaking-through stare that he was beginning to know too well—but he refused to let her discourage him as he mulled over his first question.

It wasn't like he wanted to know her deep, dark secrets. He wasn't planning to get dirty or inappropriate or obnoxious. Truly, he just wanted the basics.

He nearly asked for her given name to start, but he pulled up short, suddenly very aware that he'd still never shared his own, and even though he happily would—even though he craved the sound of his name on her lips the way he suspected an addict ached for their next hit—he wasn't such an idiot that he didn't see the hypocrisy such a question would've highlighted.

Besides, a part of him—a not-so-tiny part of him—wanted her to ask that question herself.

Instead, he went with: "So where'd you grow up?"

"You wouldn't know it."

A burst of air that was half-groan, half-snort erupted from him. "See, that's exactly the kind of bullshit answer that doesn't actually count. What's so difficult about that question? Just answer it. Where'd you grow up?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "The truth won't change just because you shout louder." She laced her fingers in her lap, staring at the mountain range her knuckles formed. "It's not a place you'd know. That's straightforward fact."

Ignoring her, he tried to place her accent, but he'd never paid much attention to most people's cadence, and he couldn't come up with anything more precise than: "Central Japan, right? That's not so hard. Is it just some teensy town or—"

"Not Japan."

"Huh?"

"I'm not from Japan."

Oh. Well, shit.

"But your Japanese is perfect."

"Yes, it is," she answered flatly. "Better than yours, even. Now, next question."

He considered fighting her, debated the merit of spending the rest of the night asking that same question over and over and over until she simply gave in, but he didn't. "I still have five questions. Where you're _not_ from isn't what I asked."

"Fine."

He tapped his finger against his chin. "Any siblings?"

"Nope."

"You and I both know I was looking for more than a one word answer, but okay. I'll take it." He cocked his head, puffing out one cheek as he weighed the pros and cons of his next probe. Its cons landed one after another, lining up in a long, undeniable row, but he knocked them all aside and forged ahead anyway. "Tell me about your best friend."

"That's not a question."

"It is in spirit."

Despite the tension turning her back to rigid stone, she laughed. Yet even as that huffing note dispersed into the darkness, her gaze slid away from his, off to an abandoned corner of the bedroom. Bleak sadness etched its way into the lines of her face, and for a second, he forgot what her smile even looked like.

"Frost," she said eventually.

"Huh?"

"My best friend's name. Frost."

Yusuke scratched behind his ear, not quite sure how to handle the sobriety in her voice. He'd expected warmth, fondness, the hint of a joke—something to suggest she loved her best friend. That they meant something to each other the way Kuwabara meant something to him. "That's, uh, more of a nickname, isn't it?"

"Yeah. But so is Hibana."

He startled, an awkward breath catching in his throat. Hibana was only a nickname? "Didn't realize I should've given you a fake name back when we met," he said, hoping his tone was light and sarcastic—rather than confused and dumbfounded. Shoving out his hand for a shake, he announced, "Name's Skullcrusher."

More like Dimwit. But whatever.

She must know that already.

"Don't be a brat, Urameshi."

It was _that_ —that term for a stupid, annoying kid—that snapped his patience. "Fuck off, Hibana. You're the one who won't tell me a damn thing about yourself. Including your freaking name. So screw you. I'm not the child here."

"Hibana _is_ my name. In all the ways that matter." She still wasn't looking at him, still wouldn't pull her attention from the corner's dense shadows. "It's been my name since the day I graduated from tactical training, and it's the name I'll take to the grave. If you want more than that from me, then you're knocking on the wrong door." She paused long enough to suck down a ragged breath, then finished, "Same for Frost. That's how she went out. As Frost to the last. Trust me, you don't need to know her as anything different."

Yusuke's rage sputtered like a snuffed flame.

 _Went out._

 _To the last._

Sayings that meant a person was dead.

"Fuck. I'm sorry." He clenched his hands into fists. "I'm such an idiot."

"Stop it," Hibana snapped. "Enough calling yourself stupid. I'm sick of it. You're not an idiot, Urameshi. Stop claiming you are. Stop _thinking_ you are."

He shook his head wildly, his arm unwinding from his leg as his knee flopped to the mattress. "I should've known. Or suspected. Or… I don't know. But it's not like you didn't give me clues." He knotted his fingers in his hair, pressing the heels of his palms over his eyes. All her hints played through his memory in a broken loop.

Her dead narrative.

How she'd clammed up when he asked about friends waiting for her outside the Grounds.

"Damn it—I'm sorry."

"Stop." She didn't sound angry now. Only tired. Exhausted. "Let's go back to you not knowing about Frost. Ask me another question. I owe you three more. Promise I'll answer all of them."

"No, it's fine. I'm done. You don't have to—"

"Ask the questions, Urameshi. Please. I need you to."

"But—"

She wrapped a hand around his wrist. Her other arm rose, her calloused fingers unwinding his from his hair and pulling his palm aside until she could meet his eye. "I need you to act like Frost isn't dead." A rough swallow bobbed through her throat. "I liked when you didn't know she was dead."

Yusuke wanted to tell her it wasn't that easy—that he couldn't stop imagining what his life would be without Kuwabara or Kurama or Hiei, and that the thought alone was nearly enough to break him. But she didn't want him to say those things, so he didn't.

Instead, he tossed back his head, twisted his legs into a pretzel, and asked with as much bravado as he could possibly manage, "How old were you when you threw your first punch?"

Hibana blinked. Once. Twice.

Then a smile cracked through her grief, and she ducked her head as a soft laugh escaped her lips. "Was that really your next question?"

"Questions," he said, thrusting an obnoxious finger into her face, "cannot be answers to questions."

Another laugh. "A proper punch? Meant to hurt someone? Thirteen. Maybe? I'm not sure."

"Hmph. Amateur."

"Oh, really? And when was yours?"

He took his time responding, making sure he'd bricked cement around his heart. If she wanted to pretend her best friend wasn't rotting somewhere six feet under, then he'd pretend—but it took effort, and he needed it to seem like it didn't.

"Seven," he said. "Put my thumb under my fingers and nearly broke it like a dumbass. If I wasn't such a wimp, probably would've done some actual damage."

"To your opponent? Or to yourself?"

"Both." He summoned his fiercest grin. "Give me some credit, Hibana. I don't half-ass beatdowns."

"Of course not." She shifted slightly, and he realized that at some point, she'd swiveled toward him, rising on her knees in her efforts to derail him from Frost's death. Now, she rocked back against the wall, then scooted to her left, bringing her shoulder into contact with his. "Next question, please, Investigator Urameshi."

He snorted. "Let's stick to Skullcrusher, shall we?"

"Aye, aye."

He made a great show of pondering the fourth of his allotted five queries, and while he hemmed and hawed, her hand bumped his on the mattress. He couldn't be sure who moved first, but by the time he started talking, their fingers were laced together, his thumb rubbing slow circles along her knuckles. "Why'd you join a military outfit?"

Honestly, he expected her to evade again, but true to her word, she answered—no dodging involved. "My family practiced martial arts my whole childhood. It was only natural to pursue that further. Once I developed the X-KAIROS, I was recruited by a specialized tactical unit in need of operators skilled at breaching high-risk areas. I fit the bill, and I never looked back."

"I think," he said slowly, "that you just said a whole heck of a lot of nothing."

She squeezed his hand. "Basically, I make things go boom real good—and I enjoy doing so. The rest of the job just fell into place."

"Huh. Ya know, I think my story's cooler."

"How so?"

"Well, I mean, I kicked the bucket. And that's what got me recruited. It's a pretty high mark to beat. I'm not judging you for not hitting it." Nudging her with a conspiratorial elbow, he added, "Though, once I bit the dust a second time, I got fired. So you win some, you lose some, I guess."

"I'd ask what any of _that_ was supposed to mean," she said, "but you have one more question. Hit me."

He sucked in a breath, letting oxygen flood his lungs, then breathed it out until his chest deflated as far as it could. Heady with his next inhale, he pushed out the words before he could chicken out.

The question for all the marbles.

"Is there a guy waiting for you outside the Grounds?"

The stillness that overtook her couldn't be missed, and Yusuke feared for a heartbeat that he'd stumbled into another gravesite, plunging over the lip of the pit before he'd even realized he'd entered a cemetery—but then Hibana shook her head and her thumb swept once along the length of his.

"Nah."

Cool as he could, he shrugged. "Good to know."

"Is it?"

"Yeah." Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her tuck her chin to hide a smile. He didn't bother to disguise his own grin. "With that, Skullcrusher rests his case."

For now, anyway.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Kuwabara Kazuma

 _ **Squad**_ : Kuwabara, Youko

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **50**_ Alive

Water lapped at Kuwabara's toes.

Strictly speaking, he shouldn't have taken off his boots. He could _feel_ Kurama's disapproval of his choices like a knife between his shoulder blades, needling at him, stabbing him with bright points of you're-being-a-colossal-idiot frustration. But Kuwabara didn't care. He really, really, really didn't.

The freaking _air_ had spent the last hour trying to kill them, and honestly, if there were other people loitering somewhere around this tributary where Kurama's desperate flight had at last come to a halt, then let them try to kill Kuwabara Kazuma. He wouldn't take any of their bullshit. Not now. And he didn't need proper footwear on his side to beat them into oblivion.

Bending down, he submerged his hands in the clear water, then scraped dried blood loose from his knuckles, watching it disperse into the silt.

The moon hung overhead, reflected like a silver disk on the pond's still surface. Kurama had flown over the river that fed into this stagnant pool, but it had been so slow-moving that its currents died out nearly as soon as they reached the tiny lake. Around his legs, a clump of reeds whispered, rustling under the night's steady breeze, and Kuwabara stepped clear of them until he could see himself clearly in the water's reflection.

Welts still littered his body, refusing to heal even though he was free of the Blue. The bandages Kurama had used on them both had been their last, and without more medical supplies, there was nothing to be done for the pocks turning his flesh into a diseased expanse straight from a horror movie. The sores didn't hurt too badly, though, and when he submerged his forearms, more blood flaked away beneath his stubborn efforts.

At his back, Kurama cleared his throat. "Unless you want to spend another night soaked and shivering, I'd suggest not wading any deeper."

"Thanks for the advice, but I've got this under control."

"I'm getting the distinct impression you're irritated with me."

Kuwabara sighed. Trust Kurama to cut right to the point. "Nope. Just… fed up with everything to do with this stupid place." Straightening, Kuwabara shook water from his hands. "Also, we tried the whole stick-to-our-plan-and-just-go-west thing, and that sucked. So I'm going to start leaving red cloth again. Maybe Hiei and Yusuke won't find it, but clearly hoping shit is going to magically go right is _not_ how we're going to get out of here."

He expected resistance. Kurama had a way of shutting down opposition with nothing but a few choice words and an inarguable truth, and Kuwabara fully anticipated one such argument surfacing now.

But it didn't come.

"Fair."

Kuwabara turned in time to see Kurama bend and swipe his own hands through the water, though the gesture seemed pointless, not really meant to clean his fingers so much as to simply experience the sensation of water between his digits. Meaningless energy expenditure wasn't really Kurama's shtick, and a chill wriggled through Kuwabara at the sight of his friend so lost—so without purpose.

"Don't get me wrong," Kuwabara amended. "I don't think we should wander aimlessly either. I just think… well, two plans are better than one, right? We can do both your thing and mine."

"Of course."

Kuwabara dragged his damp fingers through his hair, gooseflesh pricking across his forehead at the chilly touch. The wind howled between them, empty and mournful. Hunching his shoulders against the gusts, Kuwabara trudged back to dry land and made a half-assed attempt at drying his feet before yanking his socks back on. He laced his boots slowly, chewing his lip at he tied perfect butterfly knots—keeping his hands steady even as he desperately sought the right words.

Comfort wasn't his strong suit.

At least, not when it came to Kurama.

"It's okay not to know where we go from here, you know," he said eventually. It wasn't quite the affirming statement he'd meant it to be, but at least it didn't emerge as a question. "You don't always need the answers. Most of the time, I just bumble through, and I make it out alright."

Kurama's smile was wan. "I dislike fighting enemies whose secrets I cannot ferret out. In this place, I've no control over what we learn or when we learn it. One moment, I believe we're safe. The next, we're fleeing a corrosive energy field that would likely kill us given a long enough window of exposure." His mouth skewed sideways, puckering into a tight purse as he turned over his final words. "Boiled down to our most central tenets, we each offer a certain strength to the team. Yusuke's power. Hiei's will. Your heart. My intelligence. Yet, ever since we departed on our reconnaissance mission to the lab in Demon World, I've provided nothing but failings on that front. It's… vexing, to say the least. And disheartening."

Kuwabara scoffed. "You're more than just a brain, Kurama. Don't sell yourself short." Hoisting his pack onto his shoulder, he added, "And you worked out how to follow my red threads. If you hadn't, I'd be dead. I'd say that's about as far from failing as you can get."

"Perhaps."

"Nah. No 'perhaps' about it." Grinning, Kuwabara slung an arm around Kurama's shoulder and led him up the embankment. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to sleep. Tomorrow, we leave a bread crumb trail _and_ we figure Yusuke and Hiei might be. We'll find them. I know it."

It took a second—a too long, slightly awkward second—but then Kurama nodded. "Yes," he said. "I'm sure we will."

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **7**_ Kills

 _ **49**_ Alive

Come morning, Hiei traveled south. No prey crossed his path, and he made good progress, keeping within the ring of the barrier as it began to retract once more, this time not quite three hours after dawn. If Hiei had tracked it correctly, the first manifestation had begun shrinking at noon. This time, it was quicker. It didn't take Kurama to glean what that meant—the timeline was tightening. More than that, the Blue moved faster now as well, devouring terrain at a swifter pace, and Hiei had to cut a strategic path through the rugged hills to avoid its bite, careful not to get caught out.

He'd thought the tally of living combatants would drop as fast as it had the day prior, but it seemed his competition had wised up, and the _Alive_ counter held mostly steady in the corner of his vision, only the occasional blip causing it to tick lower.

He should've known.

He couldn't trust the environment to win this fight for him. Nor could he hope his enemies might whittle themselves down.

No—Jaganashi Hiei could not rely on others. He never had, and he would not start now.

As seething rage combusted in his chest, he vowed to push his _Kill_ count into double digits before sundown. Blue or no Blue. Allies or no allies. Powers or no powers.

By early afternoon, he had targets—a trio of fighters trekking across a wind-battered beach, headed for a bridge he'd make sure they never reach.

Brandishing his machete, he snarled and gave chase.

 _Time to hunt._

* * *

AN: Some Hibana backstory! Not a lot of it, perhaps. But something is better than nothing, right? This chapter was a fun one. It was nice to slow down for a second and focus on some character development moments instead of massive fights. Especially because some game changing altercations are on the horizon. Muahaha.

Massive thanks to last chapter's reviewers! The last two weeks were a doozy, and each time I heard from one of you was a nice bolt of happiness through the mayhem. So thank you, you wonderful souls! Much love to: MissIdeophobia, Lady Hummingbird, Hyphen, SlytherclawQueen, DeusVenenare, KyoHana, roseyes, and Shell1331!


	16. Bridge Trolls

_**Chapter 16: Bridge Trolls**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **1**_ Kill

 _ **49**_ Alive

Hibana on the prowl was the hottest damn thing Yusuke had ever seen.

It wasn't her figure that stoked flames in his gut. Not her legs nor her ass nor her curves. And it wasn't the way she moved, either. Not the sway of her hips nor the roll of her shoulders nor the tumble of her hair. It was something else. Something about _her_ —the girl inside her weapon of a body, not her flesh and muscle and bone.

When Hibana was in the zone, she was so sure of herself, so focused, so unwaveringly confident—and the intensity of her squirmed beneath Yusuke's skin. He was attuned to her every movement, thrumming with an awareness of her that he really needed to squelch. Now wasn't the time for distraction. As long as they were in the Grounds, he had to keep a clear head. His goal had to be finding his team, not memorizing the look of her like this. In her element.

Thriving.

He forced his attention elsewhere, and Hibana became a black smudge at the edge of his vision as he surveyed the gray waters dividing them from the island to the south. Under the glare of the late afternoon sun, the waves' white caps took on a golden hue, but even the sunlight could barely manage to lighten the dreary coastline.

Ahead, a long bridge crossed the channel, connecting the islands. The night before, after putting Yusuke's question game to rest, Hibana had flagged this bridge—the westernmost of two—on her map. Its twin lay well to the east, almost centered in the newest Circle. Had they still planned to cross to the military outpost, they'd have needed to pick their poison, but as things stood, Hibana merely wanted to assess whether anyone had crossed to or from the smaller isle recently.

Yusuke didn't quite get how she'd work that out, but he hadn't argued with her suggested route. Now that they had an adrenaline shot in hand, he didn't care one way or another how they spent their days. As long as he could keep his eyes peeled for his team, he was good.

Hence this trek to the southern coast.

At the edge of the beach, Hibana sheltered down between weathered rocks, staring the half mile up the shore to the bridge. Not far beyond it, the Circle flickered along the horizon, a sweeping wall of blue light.

Settling beside Hibana, Yusuke shoved his hands into his pockets and ducked his shoulders into the wind. "What's the plan, captain?"

"Don't call me that."

"Not the right rank?" He angled his head downward, his eyes watering under the breeze's assault, but he managed to keep the plane of her left cheek in view, and he watched as a beleaguered smile took root while he prattled on. "What are you? Lieutenant? Private? General?" Tossing a conspiratorial elbow into hers, he finished, "I don't actually know what any of these titles mean, but you're doing this weird not-quite-blushing thing, and it's pretty great, so I'm not going to shut up unless—"

She clamped a hand over his mouth.

For a fraction of a second, he went quiet, but then, with devious, gleeful pleasure, he did what he'd failed to do once before. In a swift assault, he swiped the flat of his tongue across her palm and cackled as she recoiled in horror.

"What the fuck, Urameshi? Are you a child?"

He only laughed harder.

She swiped her hand across her thigh, her nose still crinkled in disgust. It took everything in him not to press a kiss straight to its scrunched-up point.

Which was… more than a smidge distressing.

Nose kisses were decidedly _not_ his thing.

"Don't you know better than to stick your hand into an animal's cage?" he asked once he managed to catch his breath.

"Don't you know how to be quiet?"

"Nope. Thought I'd proved that already."

A muscle ticked in her cheek, betraying the smile fighting to wiggle free. "You're insufferable."

"Eh. I reckon I'm actually pretty great." Rocking sideways, he bumped a shoulder into hers and jerked his chin to the bridge. "Anyway, point is: how do we know if someone crossed the bridge? And why do we care?"

"We don't, necessarily. But there's intel to be gathered here."

"Huh?"

"By now, most combatants will have worked out the meaning of the Circle. Part of that is recognizing that most of the Grounds won't stay safe forever—and eventually, one of the islands will fall outside the bounds. That makes the bridges valuable." She slipped both hands inside her hood, tucking hair behind her ears.

"Okay… But again, why would we care about that right now?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "We agreed to head north once we reach the western edge of the Grounds. Not south. So we don't need the bridge."

"We don't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't confirm whether someone's laid a trap here."

A furrow entrenched itself across Yusuke's brow. "On the bridge, you mean," he said, turning to study the long stretch of concrete and steel with fresh understanding. "To catch people fleeing the Circle?"

"Exactly."

"That's just… evil."

She didn't look at him. "It's the call I'd make. The bridge is a choke point. The perfect spot to intercept—"

"Whoa," Yusuke said, flinging out a hand to interrupt her. "Back way the heck up. Intercept people? You _want_ to start fights?"

"That's not what I said."

"Like hell it isn't."

"Urameshi, I'm not going to argue about this. I'm not suggesting we camp the bridge. You want to find your team. I get that, and I'm helping you do it." She paused, her tongue flitting out to wet her lips. She _still_ didn't look at him. "But if I was playing this by the book, if I was following my training, I'd rig the bridge. Find myself a protected spot and wait for targets. That's the _right_ call. The _winning_ call."

"No," he snapped. "Finding the guys—" Kuwabara, especially, though Yusuke wouldn't say that with Yokai floating overhead "—is the winning call.

"That's a gamble, and we both know it."

"You still don't have faith in me, huh?"

At last her gaze swung to him. It seared him to bone. "Maybe you _are_ a dumbass." Deftly, too quickly for him to evade, her hand darted up to chuck him beneath the chin. "I need you to listen to my words, Urameshi, because I don't have the patience to explain this again. You ready to do that?"

He didn't gratify her with an answer.

She plowed ahead anyway. "If I was alone or with my tactical unit, I would make a play for the bridge; however, I'm not those things. I'm with you, and you have a plan of your own that I've promised to help fulfill, so I'm going to do that, because I keep my promises. But—and this is the important part—you need to recognize why the bridge is pivotal. A defensive position on it grants protection on two sides, putting whoever holds that position at an advantage over anyone else attempting to cross. Moreover, whether the Circle ultimately closes over the large island or the small one wouldn't matter, because from the bridge, you'd have a priority escape in either direction." She paused long enough to inhale, and her attention swung back over the water. "We should verify if anyone holds that advantage now—or, at the very least, be cautious as we finish our route west. _That's_ all I'm saying."

Yusuke suspected he'd keyed in on the wrong part of her lecture, but he couldn't help asking, "You'd really lay a trap for someone if I wasn't with you? To kill them, just like that?"

Her jaw tightened, but there was no uncertainty in her tone. "More or less."

He had a flash of her two nights ago, knelt before carved numbers etched in rotting plaster, her body bowed with grief, and he couldn't reconcile that girl with the one before him now.

Without quite thinking about it, he looked up and to the left as if he could bring the counters displayed at the edge of his vision properly into his field of view. They remained out of direct sight, but the digits were still emblazoned on his consciousness. Only forty-nine combatants remained alive. The field had narrowed down to less than half.

And one of those deaths belonged to him.

Another two lay at Hibana's feet.

If not for Yusuke, she'd choose to add to that? To _seek_ more kills? The thought roiled his stomach, the beef jerky he'd gnawed for lunch a few hours back turning to acid between his ribs. Killing other fighters in the Grounds… That wasn't like beating Toguro or stopping Sensui. The people here were victim, too. They were trapped just like Yusuke, just like Hibana. The only way to win—the only death that wouldn't forever be a mark against his soul—was to best the Gamerunner himself.

"You can't really want that," he said. He threw the words like stones, spitting them with force.

"Of course, I don't, but it'd be the logical choice. The best chance at surviving. Surely you see that?" She spared him another glance, this one only half-a-second long. "We have two dog tags each. Nine first aids. A score of bandages. Nearly double digits worth of both energy drinks and painkillers. We're armed to the teeth, and we have the heals to back our power up. Everything I've been taught says we should push that advantage, but I get why we won't, and I'm not asking you to do so."

"Guess I didn't realize you'd go hunting given the chance."

"Like I said, it's the right choice strategically." She tapped a finger against her temple. "Tactical training, remember?"

"Screw strategy. It's still a cheap trick." He curled his hands into fists in his pockets. "I don't even like the idea of it."

Her eyes fluttered shut, just for a moment, just for one breath, her chest rising and falling on a long, steadying exhale. "I know."

Not _me neither._

Just _I know_.

She shifted, gaze sweeping over the bridge. Tucked against the bluffs as they were, they had a clear view of its full length, but they were sheltered from anyone approaching out of the west, and Hibana seemed set on studying the terrain for as long as he'd let her.

"What other monstrous things does your training tell you to do?"

"Do we have to discuss this now?" she asked, her head tilting a degree within the shadow of her hood. Something on the bridge had caught her attention, but when he squinted along her line of sight, he spotted nothing.

"Yeah. Enlighten my thick skull, would ya?"

Hibana sighed. "Well, then, define what makes someone monstrous."

He didn't even hesitate. "Killing innocent people, for one thing."

"But you've killed before."

"Sure. In tournaments where we all signed up to die. Or because it was one life in exchange for the whole damn world's." He was toeing precariously close to losing it—to going off on a tear about what he'd had to do as Spirit Detective and how that was wildly, inexpressively different from setting up shop on a bridge and murdering anyone who tried to pass. "Not because some sicko Gamerunner tried to force my hand. Not because I could. And never like what you're talking about. Never by plotting a trap and attacking someone who wasn't ready."

Her cheeks had paled, blood leeching away as he leaned deeper and deeper into his rant, but even bloodless, she wasn't cowed. "I get that, Urameshi. Truly. But this isn't like missions you've been on before. The Gamerunner… He's got his own agenda, and if you're not careful, you'll fall right into it."

He slid a hand farther into his pocket, his fingers gliding along the adrenaline shot's fragile casing. "We won't. I promise."

"Okay," she said simply—truthfully. "I believe you."

But she didn't tell him what strategies she'd employ.

"I'm waiting," he said.

"I think…" She trailed off, then shook her head and started again. "I think it's best I don't tell you. You wouldn't like my answers."

And that was it.

He could tell by the set of her jaw that no matter how hard he pressed, she'd say no more, and as she resumed her watch, her attention on the bridge like a hawk stalking prey, he remembered that he didn't know her. Not really. Not in any of the ways that counted. Hell—he could list the facts she'd coughed up on a single stupid hand.

One: she had military training. Two: she'd known what the Grounds were before she'd ended up here. Three: 'Hibana' was a code name. Four: her best friend was dead.

That was it.

Four useless tidbits.

And somehow that had been enough for him to trust her. Why? Because she'd saved his life when he'd spawned here? Because she'd shown him the ropes? Were those really reasons to trust a stranger in the midst of a death match?

Worse, were they enough to justify the hopes he'd begun to harbor, the extremely dimwitted fantasies he'd let run wild? At every opportunity, his imagination had taken to conjuring up the same nebulous possibility, a foggy figment of a moment, half-formed and hazy, that appeared as he drifted off to sleep or while they paused for breathers or when the monotonous hills grew too boring to care about any longer.

In that illusion, Hibana stood before him—but not as he knew her now.

In his mind's eye, her black jacket was gone. Her skin clean. Her hair smooth. Her battle gear swapped for jeans and a simple t-shirt. Her scowl traded in for a smile that lit up her eyes like glowing stars.

In that fantasy, she was just a girl and he was just a guy. Neither of them fighters. Neither of them killers.

Just a girl and a guy.

But maybe Hibana was never _just_ anything. Maybe she was always this woman he didn't quite understand, this enigma he wanted so badly to unravel but never could. Maybe she was happy this way.

Maybe this was all Hibana ever wanted to be.

"What are you looking for?" he forced himself to ask, desperate for the silence to end—for his thoughts to shut up and leave him be.

"Signs of whether anyone has fortified a spot for themselves yet." She pointed, and he followed her finger back to the same stretch of concrete she'd honed in on before. "Looks like a crashed vehicle. See the smoke?"

Sort of. A faint gray smudge. Maybe?

Apparently whether he saw it too was irrelevant, because she straightened and gestured for him to turn around. He complied, and she dug into his pack. "I haven't spotted movement, so it seems deserted, but let's boost up to be safe. I want to move past the bridge's mouth as quickly as we can. We'll be exposed while we cross it."

She tapped his shoulder after zipping up his bag, and he swiveled back, accepting the pill bottle and energy drink she pressed into his hands. He hadn't expected her to break out pills, too, but if she was concerned enough to think they were warranted, he wouldn't argue.

Wordlessly, Hibana uncapped her meds and popped the tab on her can, but before she downed either, she met his gaze, holding it for a tense, too-long breath. She swallowed roughly, then forced a mirthless smile. "You should know, Urameshi, that if things go wrong while we're together, I'll bear the weight of it."

He frowned, his nail leveraged beneath his energy drink's tab. "Huh?"

"If we end up in a fight at any point, I'll make the kills."

 _So you don't have to_.

She left the last piece unsaid, but he heard it all the same, whispering in the sigh that slipped from her unbidden. It punched through him like one of Jin's Tornado Fists, shoving all the air from his lungs. She hadn't spoken boldly, hadn't made the promise with pride, and the truth sunk into him like tenterhooks, tearing all his vulnerable weak spots ragged.

She didn't want those kills any more than he did.

But she'd notch them on her tally for his sake. To get them both out of the Grounds, she'd do what needed doing—and he'd judged her for it. As if he was above her. As if he were better because he balked and she didn't, because he faltered while she held firm.

Shaking his head, he cracked into his energy drink, then clinked its rim against hers. "Nah, we'd do it together. We're a squad, remember?"

Before she could protest, he drained the can in a single, long swallow, popped his pill, and broke from cover.

At once, the effects of the energy drink flowed through him, his senses sharpening, the world dropping to half-speed as his processing picked up. He'd only felt the sensation once before, but already it was familiar and—as Hibana abandoned her concealment and joined him in loping down the beach—more than welcome. Whatever lay ahead, a leg up on the competition could never be a bad thing.

But if the energy drink was a thrill, then the painkiller was sheer and complete pleasure.

Its strength flooded Yusuke, putting steel in his spine and might in his muscles. His instincts screamed with the perfection of it, insisting he was himself, his body returned to its typical glory. Technically, he remembered what Hibana had cautioned—that the pill would only provide him with a preset, programmed strength, not his own power—but combined with the energy drink's speed, it was hard to believe that.

Beneath his feet, sand crunched, the stiff crust giving way under the impact of his boots, but it didn't slow him as he and Hibana tore a path along the rocks ringing the beach. Pavement crossed the sand ahead like a black scar, feeding onto the bridge. At the edge of the road, a truck had been rolled, its rusty undercarriage bared to the world. and Hibana angled them so they'd pass north of the car, keeping it between themselves and the bridge. It didn't take Yusuke more than a second to work out why.

The smoke drifting over the water had unsettled her, and if there really was someone on the bridge, the less they exposed their sides, the better. Compared to the open road, the truck provided a shoddy degree of protection, so as far as safety went, it wasn't much.

But at least it was something.

Or so Yusuke thought. Right up until the sand hardened into cement. Right up until Hibana lurched to a halt, an X-KAIROS already in hand, her focus laser-sighted to the west.

His stomach bottomed out as he spotted what she'd seen—three fighters streaking across the beach. Weapons out. Dog tag powers activated. Bloodthirst in their screams.

"Fuck," Hibana breathed, then shoved Yusuke's shoulder, spinning him left. "Let's go!"

Onto the bridge?

Into the bottleneck?

"What about the smoke?" he demanded even as he laid on every bit of gas the energy drink had lent him, bolting down the long expanse of pavement at her side.

"Doesn't matter."

He risked a glance over his shoulder, glaring at the trio bearing down on them. The gap between their parties wasn't growing, which meant their pursuers must be boosted, too.

A man ran at their lead, his hands wreathed in scorching flames—in burning fire that Yusuke recognized. Flames that had seared him and saved him and pushed him to his limits in a thousand practice fights over the last ten years. Flames that belonged on the fists of a prickly little bastard of a fire demon, not those of a six-foot asshole of a man.

Mortal Flames.

Hiei's flames.

Yusuke nearly stopped where he stood.

Still, he forced himself onward, wrenching his head around to study the bridge unfurling ahead. Abandoned cars littered its length, smoke drifting from a wreckage near its middle. "Their leader has Hiei's dog tag," he managed between gasps.

"How can you tell?"

He leapt a piece of shattered pavement, landing smoothly on the far side. Two strides later, he'd crossed onto the bridge. "I'd know that fire anywhere." It was unnatural, too steady, too orange—too powerful—to be anything but the Mortal Flames. "We should fight for it. Hiei would—"

A detonation sundered the concrete beneath Yusuke's feet.

Sheer force hurled him sideways, air exploding from his lungs, and he plowed into the open door of a deserted car, his legs crumpling beneath his weight. A desperate grab for the door kept him upright, but the wet seep of blood already warmed his ankle, and without even taking a step, he knew the damage wasn't some minor blow.

Hissing curses through clenched teeth, Yusuke hunched behind the car door and yanked his bag over his shoulder, then dug out a med patch. With a careless slap, he plastered it to his cheek and rose up enough to peak through the door's grimy glass.

Farther along the bridge, amongst the debris at its midpoint, he spotted movement within the drifting smoke Hibana had seen at a distance. Three people? Four? He didn't watch long enough to take a proper tally, his attention already seeking Hibana in the carnage at the mouth of the bridge. The explosion had shattered the structure, nearly destroying the entirety of the bridge's connection to solid ground, and for a panicked second, Yusuke thought Hibana might've fallen through a crevice that had formed, but then a black figure appeared from nothingness ten feet up the road, and he realized she'd cloaked herself at the first sign of danger.

Calling on his own dog tag, he brought his shield online. The barrier coalesced over his skin, and as the flesh at his ankle knit itself back together, he managed his first full breath since the bomb went off.

He was alive. Hibana was alive.

Even if he had no idea what the fuck that explosion had been, even if they were pincered between enemies on both sides, all that mattered was that she hadn't died on him—and that _he_ hadn't died on _her_.

"Hibana!"

She spared him a lightning fast glance, then phased out of existence. A breath later, she crouched at his side, her hands grabbing for his bloody leg, shoving his pants away to reveal the half-healed skin beneath. Despite the med kit's early work, she still blanched at the extent of the damage.

That was… not great.

"That bad, huh?"

She winced, but said nothing.

Catching her eye, he tapped his cheek. "Already fixing it, though." A quick sweep of her body revealed her to be uninjured beyond a healthy coating of dust. "Glad you escaped okay."

Hibana didn't answer directly, instead twisting to look up the road. "It's going to be a few minutes before you can walk—and we don't have minutes."

Sure enough, the asshole with Hiei's dog tag was still closing. He and his gang had slowed from their outright sprint, but they hadn't peeled off entirely, and it wouldn't be long before they were here to deliver the killing blow the bomb had failed to inflict.

"So what's the plan?"

Hibana whipped around again, back toward the figures milling in the smoke down the bridge. He followed her gaze, this time actually processing the fortifications they'd claimed for themselves—two more overturned cars and a dozen crates that had tumbled from a crashed box truck. Not exactly a fortress, but significantly better than a single car door.

"I made a bad call," she said, more to the air than to Yusuke. "Never should have attempted to cross the road. Never should have fled to the bridge at all. I saw the fucking smoke—"

He latched on to her wrist, tugging until her eyes flitted to his. "Blame games are stupid. Let's just get ourselves out of this."

She glanced again at his ankle, then at the trio approaching from the north. "Take out the grenades you found in the first crate. Use them to hold off those three until your leg has healed enough for you to fight." In a deft move, she pulled free of his grip and rocked on to her toes, readying to move. "As soon as you're fit to do so, _run_. Do you understand me? Take off and don't look back. Once you clear the bridge, I'll follow."

"Hold up. You can't—"

But she was already gone, ghosting out of sight.

She reappeared ten feet down the bridge. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Moving deeper and deeper into enemy territory with each flicker. Leaving Yusuke defenseless. Dividing their meager team neatly into two.

 _You can't fight them alone._

That's what he'd planned to say, the argument he'd have mounted if she'd given him the chance, but she hadn't. Intentionally or not, she hadn't stuck around to hear him out, and now he had no choice but to obey or else forsake her to enemies she couldn't possibly best alone.

She hadn't actually left him any choices.

Of the options before him, there was only one he'd consider—and it involved grenades and luck and a stubborn streak ten miles wide. Which, if he was being honest, was how he won most fights. Well, minus the grenades, anyway…

Keeping his weight balanced over his uninjured leg, he pawed through his backpack until his figures closed over the leather pouch he'd shoved into a side pocket. He refused to check on Hibana—knew that doing so was the emotional choice, not the strategic one—and with desperate hands, he yanked loose the knot holding the baggie closed. One after another, the grenades rolled into his palm.

They weren't much to look at. If Hibana hadn't called them grenades, he never would've known that's what they were. No pin stuck from their sides, and they weren't green or corrugated like those in movies.

They were just silver spheres, featureless but for a tiny blue button.

Gritting his teeth, Yusuke hunkered back against the car and watched the massive man with the flaming fists pick his way around the overturned truck where Yusuke and Hibana had briefly hidden themselves. The two women trailing the giant were similarly armed, one with an energy spear, the other with spikes protruding from her knuckles like a poor man's Wolverine. All three were battered, bloody and bruised. If he could see their _Kill_ counters, he'd bet not a single one would display a _0_.

Three grenades against three attackers.

Not particularly stellar odds, what with how he'd never lobbed a grenade in his freaking life. But the explosives didn't have to win him the fight. They only needed to hold off his hunters long enough for the med kit to finish its work.

Then he could take the battle to them.

And oh, how glorious that would be.

Still, staying patient wasn't his strong suit, and as the trio crept closer step by step, Yusuke itched to hurl the first grenade—to initiate on his terms instead of theirs. He held firm, though, resisting the need to check on Hibana with every stitch of will he'd ever possessed.

In the end, all the shit hit the proverbial fan in one noxious, horrible heartbeat.

One moment, the Grounds were silent but for the whining wind, the bridge undisturbed but for milling dust and migrant smoke. The next, a man was screaming somewhere behind Yusuke, a series of explosions rending the air with a _pop, pop, pop_ that chilled his bones. Simultaneously, the trio approaching the bridge burst into a sprint, and in the space of a heartbeat, Yusuke slammed the button on two of his grenades, then launched them down the street.

They detonated like twin hellions, shrapnel and unfiltered energy bursting across the mouth of the bridge.

The _Alive_ counter dropped fast.

 _48._

 _47._

 _46._

But his _Kill_ count ticked only once. _2_.

The remaining two deaths weren't his to claim. They belonged elsewhere, but he couldn't begin to guess their owner. He could only pray Hibana wasn't among the dead, and that hope became his second desperate plea as he leapt from his crouch behind the car door—willing his ankle to support him with all his might.

It did.

Barely.

But it did.

As the debris settled, Yusuke saw the woman with the energy spear had gone down, her body strewn across the concrete just a dozen yards away, her temple a pulpy mess of blood and shattered bone. Behind her, Wolverine-girl knelt on the pavement, left arm hanging limp, her shoulder torn to pieces. The man, last of all, had been thrown backward, the force of the grenades enough to toss him onto the sand. His arms were flung wide, but his fists still burned, the Mortal Flames as hot as miniature suns, melting the sand into malformed glass.

Yusuke's barrier remained a shield across his flesh as he sprinted back down the bridge—or _tried_ to sprint. He wasn't nearly as fast as he had been, and no matter how hard he pushed he couldn't force his legs to churn faster.

The energy drink had run out.

The painkillers, too.

He was weak, pathetic Urameshi again.

 _Fuck_.

It was too late to change his trajectory, so he didn't bother trying. Instead, he balled up his fists, summoned electricity, and crashed into Wolverine-girl with a howl.

Three punches to the gut doubled her over, but she didn't stay incapacitated for long, and as he drove an elbow downward, hoping to catch her between the shoulder blades, she dropped and rolled. Her claws swiped across his leg, tearing ragged wounds through his calf—hampering the limb that hadn't yet failed him.

He couldn't tell if the first aid patch was still at work, didn't even have time to check if it remained pressed to his cheek, and though Hibana's order rung in his ears, compelling him to bolt, Wolverine-girl wasn't having _any_ of that. Before he could so much as lunge backward, she struck again, her claws unimpeded by his barrier, and he had no choice but to defend himself.

The full power of his lightning was sickening.

Horrific.

Enough to turn a man's stomach.

But that didn't stop Yusuke from unleashing it into her. Nor did it stop him from following her to the ground, one hand clamped around her throat, the other splayed against her gut, both pumping sheer, unadulterated electricity straight into her system.

When his _Kill_ counter climbed, he wasn't surprised.

Rolling free of the dead girl, he glanced up the bridge just in time to watch an X-KAIROS implode, destroying one of the cars that formed the bridge trolls' fort. So Hibana was still fighting, still alive, still safe—but for how much longer?

Her survival meant two of the kills in the initial moment of insanity must have been hers. Which left her with two more foes to down. They still had the advantage—superior numbers, knowledge of the terrain, defenses to hide behind—but Hibana was no slouch. She'd pull through. He knew—

He watched it all happen.

Hibana hurling another X-KAIROS. Hibana stepping backward. Another landmine combusting into gouts of flame and shrapnel. Hibana screaming. Crumpling. Bleeding.

It was over so quickly, the bridge gone quiet almost instantly but for Hibana's pained gasps.

As one, her remaining foes swarmed from their battered fortress, knives at the ready. Even at a distance, those blades were wicked. Rusted and curved. Blood-stained and nasty. And Yusuke didn't need to be a mind reader to know what their wielders hoped to achieve.

No. _Hell no_. Not like this.

He lunged, already knowing he'd get there too late—and then he fell, sprawling across the concrete, his knee blown out from under him. Pain blurred the edges of his vision as he scrambled onto his ass, the hulking form of the Mortal Flames' thief looming over him.

The man had struck Yusuke with a piece of warped steel, shattering his knee with a single crushing blow. The snarl on the man's lips was fiendish, animalistic in its violence, and Yusuke couldn't even throw up an arm before his attacker drove a flame-coated fist across Yusuke's chin.

Which hurt.

Like a motherfucker.

But didn't burn.

Despite everything, despite the nightmare unfolding around him, Yusuke grinned. Maybe that stupid barrier dog tag wasn't useless after all.

With a shout, he surged onto his good leg and landed a quick flurry of electricity-fueled strikes to every vulnerable point on his assailant's body he could reach. Throat. Groin. Temple. Jaw. Nose. Spike after spike of lightning delivered in an inescapable barrage. Whatever he lacked in pinpoint accuracy, he made up for in gusto—tenfold—and in the end, Yusuke's eleventh hit took the man off his feet.

As Yusuke's knuckles caught him behind the ear, the brute lost consciousness, his eyes rolling into his skull as he stumbled backward, then collapsed in the street. Yusuke loitered over him for one long second, ragged breaths juddering through him. Then he spun and found Hibana.

Still alive.

But not for long.

He didn't know how she'd managed to fend off her attackers for even a few seconds, yet she had, and one now hunched a dozen feet from her, his dagger gone missing, blood streaming from a gash across his face. The other, though, hadn't wavered, and chilling horror dripped down Yusuke's spine as the man fell on her, knife streaking in a plunge for her heart.

She ghosted at the last second—fading from existence.

But she hadn't escaped. She'd reappear soon, and hobbled as she was, she wouldn't have put much distance between them.

Yusuke was too far away to save her, too hampered by his own injuries to mount a charge down the bridge and wipe those two assholes from the Grounds forever. His lightning was no good at range, and she was out of reach. So wretchedly, cruelly out of reach.

He was going to watch her die.

After everything she'd saved him from, he was going to be nothing but an audience as her life was snuffed out.

He took one desperate step, dragging his busted leg behind him. Then another. Then stumbled, pitching toward the pavement as Hibana uncloaked, only five feet from where she'd lain previously.

Yusuke slammed to the cement, and something in his pocket… clinked.

For one, frozen sliver of time, he lay in the street, hands pressed to the ground beneath his chest, heart drumming, thoughts swirling—conjuring up an image of Kuwabara wielding the Dimension Sword, of Kuwabara cutting them free of the Grounds, of Yusuke waking in his immersion chamber and hunting the Gamerunner down.

Then he thought of himself. Here. Now. With his Spirit Gun. Of what it could do that his lightning could not.

In the next second, he fumbled the adrenaline shot free of his jacket, yanked the cap off the needle, and plunged it behind his skin. One thrust of his thumb compressed the plunger—and he came _alive_.

The world went sharp at the edges, his senses ratcheting to levels of superiority he'd forgotten they possessed. Strength coursed in his veins, in his muscles, in his heart, his power returning to him in a crush, spirit and demon energy circulating like tidal waves, ready to crash to shore at his beck and call. He thrummed with the completeness of it, with the truth of who he was.

Urameshi Yusuke.

Former Spirit Detective. Ancestral son of a demon king. Street punk extraordinaire.

He shoved to his feet, unbothered by his ruined knee or bleeding calf. With his energy returned to him, those injuries were trivial. He'd fought through much worse in the past. So he didn't waver when he raised his arm and folded his fingers into their habitual shape. His calm was like that of a sharp shooter as he took aim, his hand steady as a statue's as energy coalesced at the tip of his finger, whining in that telltale way it always had, so familiar to him it registered more like a purr.

Yusuke waited only a second longer, letting Hibana's aggressor gather his bearings, ensuring he had the absolute perfect shot.

And then—he fired.

* * *

AN: Like so many other terms I've used in this fic, 'bridge trolls' is a frequent phrase used by my favorite streamers. Sometimes they're the trolls; sometimes they're the victims. In either case, shenanigans always ensue, and from the moment I conceived of TUG, I knew I needed a chapter like this one. Hope I delivered!

As always, heaps of love to last chapter's reviewers. Truly, you are all so kind and wonderful. My life is still in turmoil (even had to move out of my house because it's gotten too cold without heat or hot water), and every time one of you appears in my inbox, the day ends up significantly brighter. So thankyou! You all rock: Vulvarity, PondRiverWilliams, Lady Hummingbird, Hyphen, SilverThornz, SlytherclawQueen, Laina Inverse, roseeyes, and Guest!


	17. The Water Mission

_**Chapter 17: The Water Mission**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **3**_ Kill

 _ **45**_ Alive

The Spirit Gun ravaged the bridge.

Yusuke hadn't meant it to be so massive, so destructive. Whether it was the fear pumping in his blood or the strangeness of having his energy back, he couldn't say, but the shot emerged stronger than he'd ever intended, and he could only pray Hibana had the smarts to get out of the way.

Through the wall of blue light, he couldn't see her, but he knew in his bones when the Spirit Gun found its target. As his _Kill_ count climbed to _4_ , and then to _5_ , his heart shattered against his breastbone. A jumble of prayers tied up his tongue, stuck behind his teeth. He'd never cared much about gods, and he didn't have one to plead with now, so as the last of his energy faded, revealing the path of ruin he'd created, he held his breath.

Waiting.

Watching.

Until _there_ , right at the edge of the bridge, Hibana flickered into view.

She was just a black smudge from here, a heap of torn, bloody cloth, but he was sure it was her. Alive. Not dead.

A grunt at his back clued him in to the other competitor still clinging to life on this bridge, and Yusuke spared a glance over his shoulder as the brute he'd knocked out clawed his way back to consciousness. Yusuke should kill him. End him for putting them in this situation to begin with. To punish the asshole for pinning them on this bridge. As retribution for abusing Hiei's Mortal Flames.

But Yusuke didn't.

Because time ran out on him.

His Spirit Gun had wrought more damage than he'd realized. The abandoned cars and scattered debris hadn't been its only victims. The bridge itself had suffered, and with a whining of steel and groaning of concrete, it gave up the ghost.

The center stretch of the structure, nearly fifty yards in total, collapsed all at once, plunging to the gray waters below. With it went the bridge trolls' abandoned fortress of cars. And the four corpses. And—the only thing that truly mattered—Hibana, gone in a tumble of black. Blurring out of sight.

Lost to the surf.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **7**_ Kills

 _ **43**_ Alive

Hiei's targets had outrun him.

He didn't know how, couldn't work out what black magic they'd wrought to accelerate so much faster than he could manage. One moment, he'd been closing on them, the efficient trajectory of his route cutting into their lead. The next, they'd... left him in their dust.

It enraged him. Infuriated him.

Offended him.

It had to be a trick. Some cheap, cheaty means of thwarting the limitations imposed by the arena. But what that trick was evaded him. Despite his best efforts, his pace remained steady, practically plodding, the craggy cliffs beneath his feet scrolling past rather than blurring. No matter how hard he urged his muscles or how skillfully he drove up his knees, his velocity held firm.

This body was a shackle.

A prison.

A ball and chain dragging him inescapably down, down, down.

But even still, he followed the trail the three fighters left in their wake, snarling with frustration as the _Alive_ counter began to drop inexplicably. His dogged pursuit paid off, and when at last he crested a final rise in the cliffs, a plot of trampled grass assuring him his prey had come this way, he caught sight of them again. Or—one of them anyway.

The man hunched on a stretch of cracked pavement, his hands cupped over his head protectively as he climbed first to a knee, then to his feet. He swayed for a moment, balance seemingly escaping him, but his focus never wavered.

It was honed straight ahead. On a solitary figure at the mouth of the bridge.

Feet planted. Arms up. Fingers cocked like a gun.

Understanding clicked into place for Hiei like a series of tumbling locks. That was Urameshi's silhouette, not a stranger's poor imitation. It was _actually_ Yusuke. Right there. On the bridge.

About to be attacked.

But just as the man broke into a sprint—sudden, _familiar_ flames igniting around his fists—the bridge collapsed, and the threat he presented dissolved into nothing, tumbling into the sea like so many pounds of concrete.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **5**_ Kills

 _ **43**_ Alive

Water spat up in gouts, the spray flinging so far and wide it splattered against Yusuke's cheeks like a slap, smacking the shock from his thoughts and jarring him into action.

Maybe that was why he didn't think. Why he didn't hesitate.

Maybe. Or maybe there was simply no alternative. Maybe he had only one choice, and therefore it was no surprise that he took it. _Immediately_.

Five steps. Five bounding, desperate leaps.

Then he hit the bridge's shattered edge, tensed his legs—and sprung.

He dropped like a stone to the water below, torpedoing beneath the waves. His jump had been so frantic that he had no time for a proper dive, and he plunged in feet first, heedless of his busted knee or ravaged calf. The injuries buzzed like flies at the edge of his awareness, present and annoying, but not worth caring about.

Not now.

Not while Hibana was…

Well, he didn't know _what_ she was right now. Drowning? Knocked out? Terrified?

Dying?

But no matter which option was correct, his pain remained irrelevant. With his energy returned to him, blazing in his chest, his flesh was already knitting itself back together, his bones mending—and whatever could not heal in mere moments his energy compensated for, girding his weaknesses like scaffolding supporting a house.

Under the water, the world was gray and wild. The channel was rough. A current flowed fast and hard to the west, threatening to yank him with it, but Yusuke brushed the ocean's strength away like it was nothing, a mere handful of strokes propelling him down to the silty bottom. Vaguely, he was aware of the salt stinging his eyes, but as he twisted this way and that, puffing out his cheeks as he fought to hold his breath, he kept his eyes open, searching for a splotch of black in all the gray.

He spotted nothing. No black jacket. No swirling hair. No hurt friend.

Shattered concrete marred the seafloor, giant slabs of the broken bridge forming a graveyard beneath the waves. The collapse's disruption had stirred up sand by the truckload, and the swirling grit had reduced what would've been shoddy visibility on a good day down to complete obscurity. All the same, Yusuke held his breath for nearly another whole minute, swimming west through the wreckage, until it petered out and he finally surfaced. Bobbing in the waves, he sucked down rasping gasps as he oriented himself.

The remains of the bridge arched over the water fifty yards to his left. Which meant what, exactly? Was he too far west now? Too deep in the channel? If Hibana was as injured as he feared, she'd have been defenseless against the current, but even still, she should've sunk to the bottom before she drifted too far, right?

Drawing in a final breath, he thrust back under—eyes peeled.

He swam south and slightly east, back through the ruins of the bridge. This time, he stuck closer to the surface, hoping to widen his field of view. She had to be somewhere. Even if she'd ghosted, she couldn't disappear forever, and there was no way in hell she'd escaped the channel as hurt as she was.

How much longer did he have before the adrenaline shot ran out? Two minutes? Three at most.

He had to find her before that, before the Grounds reverted him to a weakened husk. Without his energy fueling him, his own injuries would hamper him enough that he'd never resist these waves. He'd die here, and so would Hibana—

 _There_.

She lay curled in the sand, unmoving, one arm flung protectively over her head. The water around her swirled pink with blood, the gray tint of the sea turning it almost to rust.

Before his eyes, she flickered. Only for a moment. A fraction of her usual disappearances. But when she reappeared, bubbles emerged from her nose, as if she'd managed to find air in whatever plane she escaped to when she ghosted.

That was good, he told himself.

Because air meant she was alive. Because ghosting meant she was alive.

Even if all that blood meant _not for long_.

Never in his life had Yusuke swum as fast as he did in that moment. Water churned around him, his hands thrusting forward as if cutting through air, not the channel's resistant currents. It took effort to keep himself from floating toward the surface when he reached her, but he clamped a hand into the folds of her jacket, then yanked his bag around to his front with the other and tore free of first aid patch.

Logically, it should've been ruined. All his precious belongings should've been. He'd submerged the lot underwater without a second thought, and if the Grounds were like the rest of reality, that act would've doomed he and Hibana both.

But the med kit wasn't destroyed, and when he pressed it to exposed skin on her neck, its adhesive sealed immediately.

Her eyes fluttered to him, unfocused. Unseeing.

She needed air. _Now_.

Yet Yusuke didn't lunge upward. Not immediately. First, he slapped a second first aid patch onto his own flesh, right over his collarbone—an insurance policy in case the adrenaline shot ran out on him.

Then he shoved his bag into place and seized her arm, looping it around her neck and hoisting her halfway onto his back. For a moment, she was nothing but dead weight, and Yusuke was sure he'd need to stroke for the surface with only his legs, but then her fingers snagged in the collar of his shirt, and she clung on as he drove up, up, up—until air broke above his head.

Almost instantly, a wave crashed over them, threatening to shove him under again, but he fought through it, and as it passed, they remained among the spray, bobbing awkwardly atop the swells. In Yusuke's ear, Hibana panted, the hot bursts of desperation warming his neck as he angled for shore.

 _I've got you_ , he wanted to say. _You're going to be okay._

But his own lungs were as strained as hers, and his voice wouldn't answer his summons. Probably for the best. Drowning while promising _not_ to drown was precisely the shitty sort of way he'd rather not bite it.

The point was: Hibana was going to survive this.

Yusuke wouldn't accept any chain of events in which she didn't.

Which was why the man on the beach armed with the Fists of the Mortal Flame was a problem. A big, huge, fuck-their-shit-up type of problem. The type of problem that waited all of two seconds before growing exponentially worse—because right then, as Yusuke stared that asshole down, was the moment the adrenaline shot abandoned him.

Because _of course_ it did.

 _Shit_.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **7**_ Kills

 _ **43**_ Alive

Yusuke surfaced twice.

Once alone, bursting above the water like a floundering seal. Then with a passenger, a heap of black cloth and pale skin draped across his back.

Hiei hung halfway down the cliff, fighting with his useless body to descend to the beach below, and he noticed the exact moment Yusuke realized company was waiting for him on land. Out in the waves, Yusuke pulled up short, treading water as he glared inland. No doubt he was trying to work out if he could win a fight with the bastard who'd stolen Hiei's fire—but it wouldn't come to that.

Hiei was going to handle this.

In a shower of tumbling pebbles and shifting shale, Hiei half-climbed, half-slid to the beach. His boots landed in twin eruptions of sand, his bag snagging on a protruding stone. Snarling, he yanked free of the rockface, unsheathed his sword, and tore into a sprint.

His strides devoured the terrain, but his racing steps weren't quiet, and the man heard him coming. The giant whirled, flaming fists raised. Fast as a striking cobra, Hiei attacked, aiming for the jugular—planning to saw out the man's throat if he had to.

The man evaded.

Lashed back.

The Mortal Flames scorched Hiei's skin, blistering the flesh stretched taut across his ribcage as the brute slammed a fist into his gut. The wind rushed from Hiei's lungs, pain setting his eyes watering, but he dodged a second hit, gathered his bearings, and returned to the offensive.

Again, the man evaded.

Rage woke in Hiei's chest like a seething dragon, driving him onward as he attacked in a flurry of blows. He no longer cared how the bastard died. Cut throat, disembowelment, exsanguination—each as good as the other. All would end with this man in a watery grave. All would end with Hiei's stolen flames back where they belonged.

All would end with Yusuke safe.

Hiei's anger fueled him, offering an edge he gladly seized. Though his foe was larger, thanks to the strangeness of this arena, the brute's size didn't lend him superior strength, and it was easy enough for Hiei to dart in close, abandoning his sword in favor of a dagger.

The blade pierced flesh. First between the man's ribs. Then lower, biting into sensitive organs. Then dead center, jerking upward.

In the space of a heartbeat, blood burbled on the giant's lips. Yet even still, he managed to ensnare Hiei in his flaming arms, his fists clamping tight. One scorched around Hiei's bicep, more flames searing his back, while the other laid waste to Hiei's throat, burning so badly it grew hard to breathe.

Panic surged.

Hiei fought. Writhed. Screamed.

Whimpered.

Until the Mortal Flames winked out and the giant's grip went slack. He staggered back—one step, then two—before pitching into the shallows, blood spreading through the water in a pink cloud of death.

Pain brought Hiei to his knees, and he buckled, his forehead sinking into the sand. Stuttering breaths made it through the hellscape of his throat, reaching his lungs like pitiful sips of air. He struggled to stay calm, to keep his wits, but fear like he'd never known pulled at him, whispering of a trip to Spirit World from which there'd be no return, hissing that the path before him would not lead to Botan and her obnoxious cheer—but to Limbo and torture and the fate he'd wrought for himself.

Yet just as the darkness closed over Hiei for good, a hand slapped against the exposed back of his neck, leaving behind a square of fabric and the irritating sensation of tightness caused by adhesive bandages.

"Well, hey, Hiei," Yusuke drawled. "Long time, no see. Whatcha been up to?"

The fiery ache in Hiei's throat receded enough for him to curse. "Saving your damn life," he spat through clenched teeth.

Crunching sand revealed Yusuke shifting, and a pained moan that could only be female preceded him murmuring, "Sorry, Hibana. No more moving now. Promise." Then a broad hand scooped under Hiei's arm and leveraged him into a sitting position. Yusuke grinned, his sopping wet hair dripping into his eyes. "Good thing I saved your life, too, huh? Now, we're already even."

"Hn. If you say so."

But yes, though Hiei would never admit it aloud—they _were_ even.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **5**_ Kills

 _ **42**_ Alive

Hiei.

Alive.

Burnt to a crisp, yes. Angry as fuck, also yes.

But _alive_.

For that matter, so was Hibana, and the combined relief of those truths burrowed into the cavity of Yusuke's chest and warmed him like a flickering coal. He didn't plan on telling either of them that, of course—because _damn it_ , he had a reputation to maintain—but the sheer comfort of it made him as giddy as a kid in a candy store and it took genuine effort to stay focused on practicalities.

Like keeping the tide from sucking Hibana out to sea. And stopping Hiei from yanking the med kit off the back of his neck. And keeping an eye on the horizon in case the utter mess of the last ten minutes had drawn less than friendly attention from other fighters nearby.

"Stop that," he said, slapping Hiei's hand away from his neck. "That's going to save your dumb life if you let it."

"Don't need it—"

Another slap succeeded where the first had failed, and Hiei narrowed his eyes as his hand fell to his lap. Yusuke met Hiei's glare with equal affection. "Look, you stubborn ass. Even if you _would_ survive those burns without help—which you wouldn't—you'd still end up in piss poor shape, and you'd be useless in a fight. Can't have that." He wagged a finger in Hiei's face, channeling his best inner-Botan as he cheerfully added, "Besides Mr. Hotness, we wouldn't want your ruggedly handsome mug disfigured for the rest of your life, would we?"

"You're insufferable."

"That's the goal." Turning his back on Hiei, Yusuke studied the cliffs for a moment, then glanced east to the bridge. No movement stirred in either direction. _Good_. Hibana wouldn't be ready to move for a few minutes yet.

She lay in the sand, curled in on herself. Her black jacket had been reduced to tatters, the hood hanging on by mere scraps, and her gray, cotton shirt beneath was stained shades of crimson and black. He didn't look at her lower legs—couldn't force himself to see how badly she'd been hurt.

Crouching beside her, he pushed wet strands of hair from her forehead, tucking them behind her ear. She barely stirred in answer, and he took a steadying breath as he stared out over the channel. All four bridge trolls were lost somewhere beneath the surf, and they'd taken their dog tags with them, so whatever means they'd used to lay landmines along the bridge was lost to Yusuke now.

Good riddance.

"You should get the dog tag off that man," Yusuke said, jerking his chin at the corpse half-sunk in the shallows. "I'm not going on any more water rescues just to get your stupid powers back."

Hiei's eyes narrowed further, constricting down to nothing but blood red slits. "What are you talking about?"

"He was using the Mortal Flames, wasn't he? If you want them back, you'll need to get one of these—" Yusuke snagged the chains around his throat and tugged his tags loose from his shirt "—off that asshole."

Hiei remained motionless, and it took Yusuke a second to realize that the demon probably wasn't up for moving just yet. His throat was still an angry battlefield of blisters and bubbled flesh, and his chest—visible through his charred shirt—was even worse.

"Never mind," Yusuke said. "I'll get it."

He hovered over Hibana a second longer, his hand cupped around her cheek. The water and blood loss had chilled her, but warmth was returning to her face, color coming back with it, too. With each passing second, she looked less and less like a girl on the doorstep of death, but it wasn't until she cracked an eye open and murmured, "Go, Urameshi," that he startled upright and lurched into the shallows.

He'd always been shit at comforting people, especially when they were hurt or injured—and especially when he cared about them enough that seeing pain in their eyes twisted his guts up into knots. And even though he knew the med kit would return Hibana to normal, that it would revert her all the way back to the whole, healthy condition she'd be in when she'd first appeared in the Grounds, he couldn't manage to untie his intestines and end their chokehold on his heart.

In all the time they'd been together, Keiko had gotten sick rarely enough that he could count the incidents on one hand. In each case, Yusuke had let her down. Not because he didn't care. Not because he wasn't there for her. But because he was just… crappy at heartfelt stuff.

She hadn't wanted her favorite ramen—which he'd cooked. She hadn't wanted company for a movie marathon—the supplies for which he'd lugged over through a rainstorm. She hadn't wanted physical comforts of any variety, not even cuddling—which he would've happily provided.

She'd wanted emotions. Feelings. Heart-to-hearts.

None of which he was good at.

Which didn't make her wrong.

But which did make her wrong for him.

As Yusuke waded into the channel, the giant's corpse bobbed in the current, and he focused on how the man's hair eddied around his head, willing himself not to think of Hibana balled up in the dirt. How much longer would she have survived if he hadn't reached her? If they didn't have an ungodly stock of med patches on hand, would she have bit the dust in his arms?

He shook his head roughly, banishing the thought. It hadn't happened. She wasn't dead. He'd saved her, and whether he knew the right sweet nothings to murmur in her ear or not wasn't important. She was alive because of him—because he hadn't failed her.

He clutched that fact close as he seized the dead man by the shoulder. Unclasping the dog tag from the uncooperative stiff proved harder than he'd anticipated, but he managed to wrest it free and trudge back to the beach. Water squelched in his boots as he passed Hiei and dropped the chain into his lap.

"Put that on."

"I don't wear jewelry."

Yusuke rolled his eyes, plopped into the sand beside Hibana, and rubbed a hand over the small of her back in soothing circles. It was only when Hiei's eyes cut to the gesture that Yusuke realized what he'd done.

He scowled.

"Shove your lies up your ass, Hiei," he snapped. "You wore a hiruseki stone around your neck for literally _years_. Put the damn dog tag on."

"No—"

With the hand not pressed to Hibana's spine, Yusuke threw sparks at Hiei, and when the demon's eyes widened, he summoned a proper electrical current to coat his forearm. "The tags give people powers, you idiot. And that one will give you your stupid fire back, so put it on, or so help me, I'll—"

Seemingly ignoring Yusuke's tirade, Hiei slid the chain around his neck and latched it. An instant later, Mortal Flames blazed over his knuckles. The relief was so evident in Hiei's slack-jawed smile that Yusuke lost his steam.

Hell.

He had Hiei back.

Belligerent, cocky, jerkface Hiei.

Yusuke's Hiei.

His glower morphed into a grin.

With a soft, relieved sigh, Hibana eased upright. Yusuke's hand remained at the small of her back, palm still splayed across the ridges of her spine, and she didn't pull away as she stretched. For a few seconds, no one spoke while she tested her limbs, confirming they were whole and uninjured, and Yusuke did his damnedest not to stare. He would _not_ leer at this girl who had nearly died on him.

There was a time and place for admiring her physique—and now was not it.

Only belatedly did he realize Hiei was staring, too, though perhaps not with admiration. More like… confusion? As if Hibana was a word puzzle coded in a foreign language, strange and indecipherable.

If Hibana noticed, she gave no indication. Instead, after a final stretch of her shoulders—and a surprisingly loud _pop_ of her joints—she straightened and dipped her chin in greeting. "You must be Hiei, then?"

"Hn."

She raised a brow, but said, "I'm Hibana, Yusuke's squadmate." She paused just long enough to tip her head and offer Yusuke a lopsided smile, then finished with words that brought Yusuke to his feet with a whoop. "And now yours, too, if you'll have me."

At first, Hiei said nothing, the gears still churning behind his eyes as he pieced clues together. But then, with absurd slowness, he nodded, just once, and in the corner of Yusuke's vision, a new name joined the list of his squad.

 _ **Urameshi, Hibana, Jaganshi**_

A team of three.

Finally.

* * *

AN: More reunions! Woohoo!

I've got two updates to give. First: I have heat and hot water back—AND IT IS GLORIOUS. After seven weeks without gas, I got those two basics back a week and a half ago. Let me tell you, that first shower at home? The BEST shower of my life. I'm still without a stove, but it seems like that should be on the horizon, so soon, my home will be a true home again. I can't wait!

Second: I am lowkey attempting to complete NaNoWriMo this. I'm more or less on track at the moment, which is fabulous. However, that does mean I haven't been able to draft any of TUG the last few weeks. I have one more chapter pre-written, which gets us through November, and the hope is that I'll be able to get more material drafted so there's no interruption to TUG's schedule. I'll keep you all posted as the month goes on!

Big thanks to last week's reviewers. It's so dang fun to hear your theories and reactions. And I'm sorry (jk, I'm so not) to those of you who thought the day was saved at the end of last chapter. There was more hell to pay first! All my love to: Lady Hummingbird, MissIdeophobia, SlytherclawQueen, roseeyes, Laina Inverse, Hyphen, DeusVenenare, Vulvarity, Shell1331, and Aly Goode!


	18. Mid-Game Lull

_**Chapter 18: Mid-Game Lull**_

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Jaganshi Hiei

 _ **Squad**_ : Jaganshi, Urameshi, Hibana

 _ **8**_ Kills

 _ **42**_ Alive

Yusuke was… smitten.

Blatantly enamored.

But what Hiei _couldn't_ work out was whether the girl felt the same.

In the fifteen minutes since she—and Hiei, though he'd never admit it—had come back from the edge of death, Yusuke had dropped a dozen clues that the pair's dynamic wasn't constrained to a mere partnership, at least not on Yusuke's end. The signs started with fleeting touches to Hibana's elbow and back, then escalated to not-so-furtive smiles tossed her way, and culminated in a seeming inability to escape her gravitational field.

He was painfully easy to read. Almost embarrassingly so—at least by Hiei's standards.

But Hibana…

Not so much.

She didn't initiate any stolen contact, but nor did she pull away from Yusuke's advances. While he pelted about her like a leaf in a gale, she remained steady as a boulder in a stream, the anchor to Yusuke's frantic energy, and though she didn't return his flirtations, she didn't reject them either. Somehow, she managed such a precise balance of disinterested acceptance that Hiei couldn't get a read on what thoughts eddied below her focused mask of concentration.

And honestly?

It irritated him to no end that he cared enough to notice in the first place.

He blamed Yusuke. After all, he'd never seen the fool like this before. With Keiko, Yusuke had long since passed from infatuation to companionship, and by the time the pair had called it quits, they'd been more akin to roommates than lovers.

So witnessing this… fledgling attraction was unexplored—and uncomfortable—territory.

"The next Circle must've manifested by now, right?" Yusuke asked as he crested the cliffs bordering the beach and turned back to offer Hibana a hand.

She didn't take it—seemingly didn't even notice it—and Hiei had to swallow a snort at the faux-smooth move Yusuke pulled as he tried in vain to pass off the gesture as swiping his palm across his thigh. Unaware of Yusuke's fumbling cover, Hibana glanced at the sinking sun. "It should have, which means we need to hunker down somewhere and plan our next move."

Hiei hardly listened as they debated the best place to cower, Yusuke tossing out possibilities and Hibana rejecting each in turn. He didn't _care_ about hiding. He wanted to hunt, to kill, to burn this whole damn island down to cinders now that he had his flames back.

In the end, Hibana made the call on their destination, and Yusuke followed her lead, pouting dramatically and needling at her elbow. She paid him no mind, and after a minute, his attention slid to Hiei.

Under the ex-detective's focus, Hiei prickled.

"So, my murderous friend, what's your kill count up to?"

Yusuke tossed out the question like it didn't matter, but Hiei could hear the undercurrent in his tone, a hint of please-tell-me-you-didn't-kill-everyone-else that would've caused Hiei to roll his eyes if he was half as childish as Kuwabara. Instead, he responded with simple fact. "Not enough."

Yusuke winced. "I don't like the sound of that." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "But give me the actual number. Just so I know if I need to sleep with one or both eyes open tonight."

"Eight."

Hibana's head turned a fractional degree, just enough to bring him into her line of sight. "Really?"

"Hn. I know a death match when I see one, and I've no interest in waiting around, letting fights come to me. I acted as circumstances dictated I should." Hiei curled a hand over the hilt of his sword, then jerked his chin back toward the bridge. "Yusuke stole two of my kills. I wanted double digits by nightfall."

Yusuke gawked at him, mouth flapping like a dying fish. "Eight solo kills? You're a mad man."

"I'm practical."

"And way too freaking efficient…"

Hibana's route led them through an outcropping of trees, and Yusuke crashed through the undergrowth like a behemoth, all snapping twigs and muttered curses. Frowning, Hiei scanned for signs of opponents keying into the ruckus, but no indicators presented themselves.

"What's your tally?" he asked lowly.

Paling, Yusuke scrunched up his nose. "Five. Four of them happened back there." He flung a hand toward the coast, and as it flopped back to his side, it tightened into a fist.

Hiei ignored Yusuke's weakness. "And you?" he called to Hibana. "How many?"

She didn't look at him. "Four."

Her answer was short. Clipped. Hiei didn't trust it—the flatness with which she'd spoken. It was too mechanical, too practiced. Too forced. He knew well what that sort of answer meant, and it rankled at him. Yusuke trusted this girl. Was besotted with her, even. Yet here she was.

Lying.

Did Yusuke not see it? Or did he simply not care?

Before Hiei could press Hibana further, Yusuke sidled close and threaded a hand through the chain around Hiei's neck, lifting the dog tag free of his shirt. "What number's on there?"

It took Hiei a puzzled glare to work out what Yusuke meant, but then he spotted the digits etched into the back of the tag. "One hundred."

"And on your wrist?"

"What?"

Yusuke raised an arm, baring the underside to Hiei. Black ink marred its pale underbelly.

 _ **097**_

"What's on yours?"

Hiei flipped over his arm and pulled back his sleeve.

 _ **100**_

"Well, what do ya know?" Yusuke drawled. "Guess your story tracks, Hibana."

"Shocking." She pushed through a thicket of shrubs, heedless of the branches scratching at the flesh exposed through the holes in her charred jacket. "It's almost as if that would've been an idiotic lie to spin."

Only a gargantuan effort masked Hiei's disbelief at her brazen retort. Not because Yusuke's particular brand of cheek didn't warrant an equal measure of guff in return, but because she'd barely veiled the admission that she _would_ lie, given the right opportunity.

"Hey, now," Yusuke countered, as oblivious as ever. "I was just confirming your theory. No need to get snarky."

"It wasn't a theory. I already have my own tag, remember? And trust me, of all the Grounds' mechanics, that's the most straight forward."

"Is it? Because I'd say the whole kill-everyone-else-before-they-kill-you shtick is pretty cut and dry."

Hibana shook her head and thrust up a hand, silencing Yusuke's next sarcastic jibe before it began. Once she had his attention, she gestured to the trees thinning ahead, and Hiei spotted a cluster of homes through the branches. Their sagging roofs and chipped pain weren't much to look at, but they appeared unoccupied, and that seemed to be all the qualification Hibana required of them.

"We need to rest," Hibana said. "Get our bearings. We're safe inside the Circle through its next cycle, but we should be prepared to move before dawn in case this area won't remain inbounds. Between the three of us, we can share watch shifts, rest up, and plan for tomorrow. Agreed?"

Yusuke shrugged. "You're the expert."

In what?

Tactical maneuverings? Or bald-faced deceit?

Perhaps both.

"Hiei?" Hibana asked. "You onboard?"

"Hn."

A flicker of uncertainty darkened her eyes, furrowing her brow as she puzzled him over, but quick as it came, she shoved it aside, turning her back on him. She flexed a hand, her fingers arching forward, and glowing energy spheres took shape, circling around one another like planets through a solar system.

"On your toes, kids," she murmured. "We'll take the place by force if we have to."

Hiei didn't miss Yusuke clenching his jaw, but he paid it no mind as he and Hibana melded out of the forest. Years of practice guided him, keeping his footsteps utterly silent, and he was pleased at how easily he fell into tandem with Hibana. She might be a liar, but at least she had her act together.

As she slunk to the nearest side door, he stalked to an open window, keeping out of sight below the sill. Yusuke loitered behind, pulling up the rear, leaving the infiltrating to those who could manage it.

Sometimes he had moments of brilliance—Hiei could grant him that much.

In this case, though, none of it was necessary.

The house sheltered no occupants, and one sweep of its interior later, they'd set up camp in the dusty living room, barricading the doors with every scrap of furniture they could turn up before unfurling their belongings across the floorboards. While Yusuke dumped out his bag in a massive, half-soggy heap, Hiei worked more diligently, unpacking his rucksack with methodical precision. Through it all, he kept an eye on Hibana, studying her movements, waiting for another indicator of deception.

Yusuke—Hiei noticed—was also doing his fair share of appraising, though it was far too obvious that Yusuke's interest lay more in concern for her welfare than suspicions about her intentions.

But on that front, there seemed little to fret about. As soon as they'd boarded up the entrances, she'd shrugged free of her tattered jacket, revealing an equally tattered t-shirt beneath as well as stretches of unmarked, healthy skin. No burns. No scrapes. No injuries.

Yusuke had healed her. Just as he had Hiei.

What a pity.

"Is there word on Kurama or the oaf?" Hiei asked as he tore into a packet of jerky.

"Not yet." Yusuke crossed his legs before him, ankles tucked beneath his knees. "But we weren't looking initially. We were…" He sighed. "Well, I thought I had a plan to get us out of here, and we were halfway to completing it before everything at the bridge sorta effed it all up."

"Start making sense, Urameshi," Hiei ordered.

Yusuke heaved another sigh, this one even more dramatic than the first. "There's a boost available in the Grounds—that's what this place is called. The Unknown Grounds. And there are all these tools we can find. Like the dog tags and first aid patches. Hibana and I found the one we needed—an adrenaline shot—but I had to use it at the bridge." He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. "I'd been planning to use it on Kuwabara. Instead, I needed it for my Spirit Gun."

To save Hibana.

Both the furtive glance Yusuke snuck her way and the frustrated grimace that twisted up Hibana's chapped lips made that much abundantly clear. But what Hiei had not expected was Hibana's answer, soft and tired and utterly world weary.

"You shouldn't have done it."

Yusuke went rigid as a board. "Bullshit."

Hibana remained unwavering. "If that shot could've done what you said… If it was your ticket out of here, you should've saved it for yourselves." She wrapped her arms around her torso, palms smoothing over her exposed biceps as if to inspire warmth. "I had options—"

"Shut up," Yusuke snapped. "Seriously. You were a dead woman walking. Actually, scratch that. You were _crawling_. You'd already lost. If I hadn't used the shot, you'd be donezo. Dead. Gone. Just like Frost."

That name meant nothing to Hiei, but from the way Hibana recoiled, Yusuke must've struck a nerve. "Don't you dare use that against me."

"Then don't sit here telling me I should've let you die."

"What good was surviving that bridge, just so we can—" She cut herself off. Shook her head. Sealed the flats of her palms over her eyes.

Hiei observed her through narrowed eyes, trying to work how she'd planned to finish that demand. _So we can die somewhere else? So we can keep killing people?_ Both sounded a little too desperate—and perhaps, too soft—to come from her lips. She was hard around the edges in a way he recognized from Mukuro's most experienced soldiers, tough and unflinching and proud. Not the type who'd balk from doing what needed doing.

But she was balking now.

"Look," she said finally, snapping the taut silence, "I'm… glad you saved me. Thankful for it. But if that shot could've gotten you out of here… well, I wish you hadn't thrown that away on my behalf."

"It was meant to get all of us out. Not just me and the guys. _All_ of us." Frustration put snark in Yusuke's tone, and his jaw flexed as he worked to rein it in. His gaze shot to Hiei, but he must not have discovered what he'd hoped to find in Hiei's eyes, because his attention snapped back to Hibana near instantly. "I already told you, Hibana: if we don't all make it out, then we've lost. That includes you. Saving the shot would've meant nothing if you were dead."

A dumb policy in Hiei's eyes. But decidedly Urameshi Yusuke.

If Hibana understood him in the slightest, she would've seen this coming.

And maybe, if she was a different sort of woman, she'd have recognized the desperation with which Yusuke meant it, the fierce, urgent need Hiei heard in his friend's voice for Hibana to survive this place just like the rest of them. Or maybe she did recognize it—and she just didn't care.

Either way, she answered only with: "We'll need to disagree on that."

Groaning, Yusuke flopped backward, weaving his arms behind his head in a mimic of his legs' crisscross. "Does _everyone_ I meet have to lug around a martyr complex?"

Sighing, Hibana pushed to her feet and shoved a hand through her tangled hair, then turned for the stairs, trudging for them like her boots were filled with cement. "I'm not a martyr, Urameshi. You could kill me a hundred times over, and I still wouldn't qualify." Pausing on the first step, she leaned her forehead against the plaster for a breath, then looked back at them. "Can you two split the first watches? I need to rest if I'm going to be any use planning tomorrow's route."

"Sure," Yusuke said, apparently too exhausted for further debate. "Whatever you need, Hibana."

With that assurance in hand, she disappeared, ghosting up the stairs in utter silence, not even her footsteps issuing a sound. Eventually, the soft creaking of floorboards betrayed her movements overhead, but it wasn't long before those dissipated, too.

In silence, Hiei and Yusuke swapped their wet clothes for dry outfits scavenged from the house. Even once they'd changed, protracted minutes passed before Hiei spoke. He bided his time, watching Yusuke mow down three separate dinners without ever sitting up, determining the precise angle of attack that would suit him best. In the end, he stuck with what he knew to be tried and true.

Cold, blunt honesty.

"You shouldn't trust her."

Yusuke went still. "I'm sorry. You wanna say that nonsense again?"

"You—and now _we_ —should not trust that girl." Hiei chewed through the last strip of his jerky, then tossed the bag aside. He'd eaten slowly, and though he was hungry enough to eat for hours, he didn't immediately seize another ration pack. This discussion warranted his full attention—whether Yusuke liked it or not. "She lied about her kill count."

"Like hell she did. Ten minutes into this shit show, she saved my life, and we've been a squad ever since. She hasn't had time for rampant murder."

"And yet, she lied."

Splaying a palm against the scuffed floor, Yusuke lurched upright. "Seriously, Hiei, you're off your rocker. That's not possible."

Hiei shrugged. "Perhaps it was just one kill. Perhaps it was ten. Either way, she's racked up more than four, and refusing to see that is simple idiocy."

"Jeez," Yusuke snapped. "And to think I _missed_ your mistrustful ass." He shook his head. "Hiei, she saved me from a bombing before she knew my name, and she's probably kept me out of an early grave a dozen times since then. If you're, like, jealous or something, I can assure you, you and Kuwabara and Kurama still have bestie status on lock. I haven't replaced—"

"Don't patronize me."

"I'm honestly not." Yusuke rubbed his forehead, his thumbs swirling over his temples as if rubbing away a migraine. "But you need to hear yourself right now. I get that you've been surviving this hellhole alone, but to come swaggering in and insist that the person whose been my partner since the moment I woke up here isn't worth trusting is almost too ridiculous for words."

Hiei gritted his teeth. Of course Yusuke wouldn't listen. _Of course_ he'd stick to his stubborn guns. Hiei shouldn't have expected anything different.

So be it.

If Yusuke wanted to let Hibana blind him, Hiei wouldn't fight him on it.

But he wouldn't close his eyes and follow Yusuke off a cliff, either.

"First watch is mine," he said simply. "I'll wake you for second shift."

"Now wait a damn second," Yusuke snapped, chucking an empty wrapper at Hiei. "That's all you're gonna say? Some weird, ominous statement about Hibana before bundling me off to bed like I'm some kid?"

Hiei frowned. "What was I supposed to tell you?"

"I dunno, Hiei. How about _everything_? How'd you survive up to now? Where'd you wake up in the Grounds? How'd you know to stay inside the Circle?" Yusuke flapped his hands wildly, windmilling his arms around as if there were simply too many words he wanted to say and he had to force them out of his hands instead of his mouth.

Hiei staved off a smirk and pilfered another bag of dried beef from their stash. "That was too many questions at once. Start over."

For a fraction of a second, Yusuke still fumed, seemingly prepared for a battle—like he hadn't thought Hiei would give in so quickly. Then Hiei's words registered, and Yusuke rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

"You're a twerp, Hiei. I hope you know that."

"Hn."

There were worse things to be.

* * *

 _ **Player**_ : Urameshi Yusuke

 _ **Squad**_ : Urameshi, Hibana, Jaganshi

 _ **5**_ Kills

 _ **42**_ Alive

Hibana was mad at Yusuke.

He'd saved her life—jumped off a freaking bridge to do so—and she'd rewarded him with anger, with frustration that he'd thrown away the adrenaline shot to stop her from becoming a tally on a _Kill_ count. On _his Kill_ count.

It was almost too absurd to fathom as he trudged up the stairs to the second floor. He tried to drown out his own temper, stuffing it down where it couldn't bother him, suffocating it with a focus on Hiei and the demon's murderous journey to the bridge.

But he did not succeed.

At the top of the steps, Yusuke hesitated, debating if he had it in him to share a room with Hibana. In the end, the house made the decision for him. Only two rooms diverged from the landing. One bedroom. One bathroom. Zero options. Still, he lingered a moment longer, reliving the nightmare the day had been. Hibana had nearly died. _Yusuke_ had nearly died. They'd lost the shot, destroyed a bridge, and used up three med kits. All for nothing. There'd been no rewards waiting at the end, only Hibana's anger.

At least Hiei had found them. And even if he was too much of a cagey dumbass to trust Hibana now, Yusuke had faith they'd find common ground.

By morning, maybe Hibana would even come to her senses. She'd been through as much torture today as he had—even more so, if he was honest—and maybe she'd truly just needed some rest, a moment's quiet to get her head on straight.

Maybe by tomorrow, she'd stop terrifying him with this suicidal streak.

Shaking the tension from his shoulders, he eased the bedroom door open and tiptoed inside. It took only a second to spot Hibana in the gloom, a lump of thicker darkness among the shadows. A second after that, his eyes adjusted enough to register that she'd swapped her ruined shirt for a new long-sleeved get-up, and she'd curled up in a pile of abandoned clothing, a wadded mass of fabric serving as her pillow.

It wasn't glamorous, but she looked peaceful enough, and Yusuke figured that was what counted in the end.

He attempted a quiet entrance, planning to slink to the far corner and catch some peace of his own, but three steps in, the floorboards creaked something wicked beneath his feet, and he froze, one boot halfway risen on his next step. It was already too late. That tiny noise had been all it took to startle Hibana awake, and in the space it took him to blink, she was on her feet, an X-KAIROS in hand, fire in her eyes.

The flames smoldered out as quickly as they'd caught.

"Hey," she murmured. As graceless as he'd ever seen her, she slumped back into her nest of discarded clothes.

"Didn't mean to wake you."

She hummed wordless understanding, but as he set up shop in the corner, moonlight caught across the frown knitting her brow into furrows. "What are you doing?"

He propped his bag against the wall, not looking at her as he answered, "Prepping for my beauty rest."

"Ah." And then, after a too long pause, the words as soft as a sigh, she added, "Over there?"

"Uh huh."

In the painfully awkward quiet, he could hear her ragged swallow, even all the way across the room. "Urameshi…" She trailed off, and rustling cloth informed him she'd flopped onto her back in her heap of pillaged garb. "I'm sorry. For downstairs. I should've thanked you." Again, her voice faded into silence. And again, she forced more words into the dark. "So thank you. Truly. I know you saved my life, and I know you did it at great cost to yourself. I'm not blind to that."

And yet—she'd rather be dead. She wished he _hadn't_ saved her.

Being thankful didn't change that.

"I just… I know how hard it is to survive the Grounds," she continued. "Getting out of here is nigh impossible. And if that shot was your chance, I wish you hadn't thrown it away for my sake."

"You act like we can't just fight our way out." At last, he turned, trying to find her in the darkness, but she'd thrown an arm over her face, and he couldn't work out her expression in the gloom. "As much as I don't like it, that's still an option. In the morning, we can hunt for more adrenaline shots—and while we're at it, we can put that tactical training of yours to use. Hiei's a bloodthirsty bastard, and you're smart as heck. Between the two of you, we're going to kick some serious ass."

"Between the three of us," she corrected.

He shrugged. "I guess."

Her arm scooted down from her eyes. "As if you're some slouch? You've got more kills than I do, Urameshi."

This time, he heard it—the forced trip of the words off her tongue. The _lie_ , as Hiei had put it. But was that what it truly was? A lie? It could just be discomfort with the reality that they'd both become murderers in the Grounds, couldn't it?

Or, well… maybe not. Because technically, Yusuke had killed before he'd shown up here, and while he wasn't sure whether every killing qualified as murder, he _did_ know that the distinction between 'killer' and 'murderer' wasn't worth quibbling about. And as for Hibana, her hands were probably as bloody as his. After all, it wasn't like she'd balked at the idea of adding to her tally so far.

Which left him with Hiei's conclusion.

She'd lied.

"Do I?" he said after a beat. "You sure about that?"

If he could see her face, he suspected he'd have watched her brow rise. "It's not a number I can easily forget."

A howl of wind interrupted his next half-formulated question, the gust bursting through the poor siding of the house. It was like the place had been built with no insulation at all, and a chill settled under Yusuke's skin. One more draft later, he abandoned his spot in the corner and scooted toward Hibana.

So much for distance.

Her arm slid another inch off her face, and one dark eye swam into view, appraising him as he meandered his way across the floor. "You're going to get a splinter in your ass, creeping around like that."

"Eh. We have bandages to spare."

She snorted.

When he was just three feet from her, he forced himself to admit the truth: escaping the wind was only an excuse—and a bad one at that. He hadn't wanted to sleep in that corner. He hadn't wanted to sleep so far away from her. And as she unfurled her arm, uncovering her tentative smile and beckoning him into her nest, he was pretty damn sure she hadn't wanted it either.

That confidence turned to dead-to-rights certainty the moment she curled into his side, one hand settling over his stomach as he stretched out on his back.

"It was cold over there," he said.

"I bet."

Her lips brushed against the collar of his shirt. Just barely. So lightly he almost didn't feel it through the fabric.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I really do mean it."

 _No, you don't._

"You're going to get out of here," she continued. "I'll make sure of it."

"Hibana—"

This time, there was nothing light about the press of her lips. She sealed them squarely over the pulse jumping in the column of his throat, and he froze still as stone, an indiscriminate grunt of surprise caught in his throat.

"I swear it," she breathed. "You're going to escape the Grounds, Urameshi."

 _Yusuke_ , he wanted to say. _My name is Yusuke._

He never got the words out.

Before he could bully his thoughts into order—and wrest control of his tongue—she rose on one elbow, the hand on his stomach curving over his ribs to keep her steady. For a single heartbeat, she hovered over him, her eyes too dark to read without light. By the next thump of his heart, she'd closed the distance between them, and just like that, she was kissing him, right there in an abandoned bedroom, her body slanted over his on the saddest bed he'd ever seen.

It was all her, that kiss.

But only to start. Only for that first, tremulous half-second.

Then it was him, too. His hand in her hair. His arm around her waist. His groan of pleased, startled need. Him, him, him.

And her, her, her.

Maybe, at some later date, he'd claim it was all instinct and desire and dumb, stupid hormones getting the best of him. In the morning, if Hiei put him at katana-point and demanded explanations, Yusuke could whip out that excuse easily enough. But that wasn't why he kissed her. It wasn't because he didn't think about the consequences.

It was because he _did_ —and he didn't _care_.

The moment her lips touched his, he thought about her lies and her evasions and her muddled history, and he thought about her saving him and her falling off that bridge and the cadence of her puffing bursts of laughter, and between those sets of things, only one of them mattered.

So he thought about the risks.

Truly he did.

But he didn't give a damn.

* * *

AN: So for a while now, I've been getting reviews about how much readers love the slow burn in this fic, to which I say: 1) YAY! That's what I've been going for, and 2) Welllll... it's only been like three days since these kiddos met. Is that slow burn? And does this chapter mean the slow burn has ignited? Either way, I'm glad everyone has been enjoying the romance, and I hope this chapter holds up!

Big thanks to all my reviewers. I love you peeps to pieces: Laina Inverse, Writingishardwhy, Aly Goode, roseeyes, Hyphen, KyoHana, SlytherclawQueen, Biku-sensei-sez-meow, Vulvarity, DeusVenenare, Aruki-Soruyo, and Shell1331.


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